Poem fractal

The Final Word

by George Cabot Lodge

10 October 1873 to 21 August 1909 (~36)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Oh, I am devoured by ambition. I do so want to do something that will last, — some man's work in the world, — that I am constantly depressed by an awful dread that perhaps I shan't be able to.”

Expressing the intense drive to achieve lasting work alongside the fear of falling short · Letter to his mother, near the end of college, 1895

More remarks (8)

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. Alfred Austin · 0.0622 + 0.0353i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  2. Lady Jane Wilde · 0.0589 + 0.0118i · 0.040 away · Compare side by side
  3. Bret Harte · 0.0533 + 0.0958i · 0.045 away · Compare side by side
  4. George Marion McClellan · 0.0173 + 0.0188i · 0.046 away · Compare side by side
  5. D. H. Lawrence · 0.0824 + 0.0886i · 0.050 away · Compare side by side
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