Poem fractal

Pavlovna in London

by James Elroy Flecker

5 November 1884 to 3 January 1915 (~31)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The Parnassian school was a classical reaction against the sentimentalism of the Romantics.”

Explaining the aesthetic foundation and discipline behind Parnassian verse · Preface, The Golden Journey to Samarkand

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. Thomas Carew · −0.1848 + 0.3558i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  2. Langston Hughes · −0.1724 + 0.3513i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  3. Nora Hopper Chesson · −0.1723 + 0.3477i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  4. Thomas Moore · −0.1995 + 0.4035i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  5. T. S. Eliot · −0.2194 + 0.3697i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
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