Poem fractal

A Song

by Ralph Hodgson

9 September 1871 to 3 November 1962 (~91)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The wink was not our best invention.”

A dry glance at slyness dressed as charm · Flying Scrolls, collected in The Skylark and Other Poems

More remarks (14)

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. W. H. Davies · 0.4103 − 1.1237i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
  2. Emily Dickinson · 0.4570 − 1.1597i · 0.052 away · Compare side by side
  3. Robert Nichols · 0.4587 − 1.1086i · 0.072 away · Compare side by side
  4. Fiona Macleod · 0.4828 − 1.1551i · 0.077 away · Compare side by side
  5. Stephen Phillips · 0.3198 − 1.1251i · 0.091 away · Compare side by side
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