Poem fractal

In March

by Patrick Reginald Chalmers

27 June 1872 to 12 September 1942 (~70)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I think it is just this combination of beauty and busyness that makes a Cocker such a jolly companion when he takes you out shooting.”

Explaining companionship as a union of beauty and lively purpose · Book, Gun-Dogs (1931), Cocker Spaniel chapter

More remarks (29)

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 · −0.3388 − 0.2901i · 0.008 away · Compare side by side
  2. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. · −0.3329 − 0.2994i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  3. Dylan Thomas · −0.3484 − 0.2707i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  4. Richard · −0.3070 − 0.2864i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  5. D. H. Lawrence · −0.3425 − 0.3227i · 0.038 away · Compare side by side
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