Poem fractal

The Mandrake Root

by Herbert Gorman

January 1893 to 28 October 1954 (~61)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Style is not an ornament applied to thought; it is the very shape of the mind expressing itself.”

Observing that literary style is an organic reflection of individual thought · Essays and commentary

More remarks (18)

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 · 0.1953 − 0.0243i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  2. Helen Hamilton · 0.2083 − 0.0016i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  3. A. A. Milne · 0.1933 + 0.0113i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  4. John Ford · 0.2153 − 0.0229i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  5. Leigh Hunt · 0.2204 − 0.0098i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
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