Poem fractal

Good Night

by Daniel Webster Davis

25 March 1862 to 11 October 1913 (~51)

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. Dylan Thomas · −0.4265 − 0.3783i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  2. Thomas Hood · −0.4022 − 0.3707i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  3. Robert Southey · −0.3952 − 0.3710i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  4. Dylan Thomas · −0.4252 − 0.3502i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  5. Charlotte Brontë · −0.4095 − 0.4048i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
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