Poem fractal

Requiem for a Modern Croesus

by Lew R. Sarett

16 May 1888 to 17 August 1954 (~66)

Browse poets 678

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. Matthew Arnold · −0.0498 − 0.3850i · 0.007 away · Compare side by side
  2. A. A. Milne · −0.0389 − 0.3756i · 0.008 away · Compare side by side
  3. W. H. Davies · −0.0595 − 0.3853i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  4. D. H. Lawrence · −0.0304 − 0.4042i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  5. Robert Burns · −0.0251 − 0.4006i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
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