Poem fractal

Epitaph

by Lascelles Abercrombie

9 January 1881 to 27 October 1938 (~57)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“No poet will ever take the written word as a substitute for the spoken word; he knows that it is on the spoken word, and the spoken word only, that his art is founded.”

Insisting that poetry remains rooted in living speech · The Epic, 1914

More remarks (1)

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. Robert Browning · 0.4472 + 0.6083i · 0.039 away · Compare side by side
  2. Richard Tottel · 0.4704 + 0.5344i · 0.040 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 0.3869 + 0.6073i · 0.075 away · Compare side by side
  4. Thomas MacDonagh · 0.4681 + 0.6430i · 0.076 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Byrd · 0.5259 + 0.5353i · 0.082 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content