Poem fractal

Dirge to a Dead Owl

by Patrick Reginald Chalmers

27 June 1872 to 12 September 1942 (~70)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“And, though his body is small, it has a heart that is big, and so the Cockers will continue to work the thick stuff for you till they wear as many prickles as a hedgehog and are as tired as a tree.”

Contrasting small stature with courage and willingness · 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. John Keats · −0.0959 + 0.2995i · 0.008 away · Compare side by side
  2. Ralph Waldo Emerson · −0.0954 + 0.3016i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  3. A. A. Milne · −0.0695 + 0.2930i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  4. Walter Savage Landor · −0.1162 + 0.2965i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  5. Richard · −0.1283 + 0.2910i · 0.037 away · Compare side by side
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