Poem fractal

Dream Song

by John Wesley Holloway

28 July 1865 to 31 October 1935 (~70)

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. Federico García Lorca · 0.9830 − 0.3831i · 0.044 away · Compare side by side
  2. S.E.K. Mqhayi · 0.8950 − 0.4155i · 0.056 away · Compare side by side
  3. Robert Burns · 0.8779 − 0.4022i · 0.073 away · Compare side by side
  4. Antonio Machado · 0.9548 − 0.4924i · 0.080 away · Compare side by side
  5. Francesco Petrarca · 0.8778 − 0.3666i · 0.086 away · Compare side by side
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