Poem fractal

The Old Ships

by James Elroy Flecker

5 November 1884 to 3 January 1915 (~31)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“It is true that the aim of poetry is to create beauty, but this beauty must be shaped by technique.”

Emphasizing the essential role of craftsmanship in poetic expression · Essay, The Gnostics

More remarks (2)

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 Herrick · −0.2898 + 0.1406i · 0.010 away · Compare side by side
  2. Arthur Symons · −0.2874 + 0.1605i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edgar Allan Poe · −0.3114 + 0.1545i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  4. Dylan Thomas · −0.2957 + 0.1252i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  5. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.2794 + 0.1733i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
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