Poem fractal

Poverty

by D. H. Lawrence

11 September 1885 to 2 March 1930 (~45)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“It is hard to hear a new voice, as hard as it is to listen to an unknown language. We just don't listen.”

On the difficulty of recognising genuinely unfamiliar forms of expression · 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. Philip Bourke Marston · 0.1099 + 0.2629i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  2. Amelia Alderson Opie · 0.1270 + 0.2504i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  3. Philip Bourke Marston · 0.0985 + 0.2594i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  4. Kahlil Gibran · 0.1129 + 0.2249i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  5. Thomas Moore · 0.0933 + 0.2280i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content