Poem fractal

The Dancer

by Walter J. Turner

13 October 1884 to 18 November 1946 (~62)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I can confidently and in soberness declare that Wagner is a colossal fraud.”

A characteristically outspoken dismissal of a towering figure by an independent critic · Music criticism, on the fiftieth anniversary of Wagner's death

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. Thomas Hardy · −0.9025 − 0.5566i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  2. Oliver Goldsmith · −0.9719 − 0.5912i · 0.067 away · Compare side by side
  3. Alfred Lord Tennyson · −0.9967 − 0.5681i · 0.076 away · Compare side by side
  4. Myra Viola Wilds · −0.8204 − 0.5848i · 0.112 away · Compare side by side
  5. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −1.0558 − 0.5219i · 0.133 away · Compare side by side
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