Poem fractal

Hallowe'en in a Suburb

by Howard Phillips Lovecraft

20 August 1890 to 15 March 1937 (~47)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Never should an unfamiliar word be passed over without elucidation.”

Encouraging active vocabulary building through curiosity and research · Essay, Literary Composition

More remarks (70)

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 Freeman · −0.6842 − 0.2234i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  2. Thomas Tallis · −0.6726 − 0.2339i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  3. Dylan Thomas · −0.7174 − 0.2210i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
  4. Richard · −0.7305 − 0.2274i · 0.039 away · Compare side by side
  5. Ralph Waldo Emerson · −0.6883 − 0.2894i · 0.044 away · Compare side by side
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