Poem fractal

Noli Me Tangere

by D. H. Lawrence

11 September 1885 to 2 March 1930 (~45)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Beware of absolutes. There are many gods.”

A brief warning against reducing life to a single final principle · Critical study, Studies in Classic American Literature

More remarks (51)

Drawing the boundary…

Read the poem Another poem

A fractal is a shape that keeps its pattern when you look closer. Coastlines, trees, shells, and weather do this. A poem can be drawn the same way.

The poem’s constant is read from the build of its lines: their length, the size of the stanzas, and the share of vowels. Poems whose constants lie closer together are built more alike. The same poem always draws the same picture. Change the length of a line, the stanza, or the vowel share, and both the number and the picture move.

Primunia is the name for the source of that order: the pattern under the pattern, already there in a tree, a shell, and a verse.

Poems nearby in the constant

A smaller distance means the lines are built more alike.

  1. A. A. Milne · 0.7479 − 0.2903i · 0.039 away · Compare side by side
  2. Robert Wever · 0.6653 − 0.2958i · 0.048 away · Compare side by side
  3. Josephine Preston Peabody · 0.7653 − 0.3270i · 0.057 away · Compare side by side
  4. Nora Hopper Chesson · 0.7966 − 0.3381i · 0.091 away · Compare side by side
  5. Violet Jacob · 0.6203 − 0.2983i · 0.092 away · Compare side by side
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