Poem fractal

Significance

by Isaac Rosenberg

25 November 1890 to 1 April 1918 (~28)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I am determined that my poetry shall have the same primitive power as a painting.”

Expressing his wish to give poetry the direct force and intensity of visual art · Letter to Gordon Bottomley

More remarks (1)

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. Amelia Alderson Opie · −0.2781 − 0.0717i · 0.007 away · Compare side by side
  2. W. H. Davies · −0.3114 − 0.0750i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  3. Thomas Moore · −0.3111 − 0.0813i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  4. Percy Bysshe Shelley · −0.3133 − 0.0766i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
  5. T. E. Brown · −0.2577 − 0.0859i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
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