Poem fractal

Romance

by Walter J. Turner

13 October 1884 to 18 November 1946 (~62)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“It is futile to declaim vaguely against all popular music.”

Defending the value of popular forms that express ordinary life · Article, New Statesman (1921)

More remarks (4)

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. A.E.Housman · 0.1336 − 0.9689i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  2. Thomas Hardy · 0.1256 − 0.9558i · 0.043 away · Compare side by side
  3. Robert Herrick · 0.1285 − 1.0203i · 0.047 away · Compare side by side
  4. Emily Dickinson · 0.1265 − 0.9328i · 0.061 away · Compare side by side
  5. Thomas Tomkins · 0.1241 − 0.9321i · 0.062 away · Compare side by side
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