Poem fractal

Time

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. Mina Loy · 0.3783 − 1.4247i · 0.073 away · Compare side by side
  2. James Joyce · 0.4780 − 1.4224i · 0.116 away · Compare side by side
  3. Robert Herrick · 0.5077 − 1.3522i · 0.122 away · Compare side by side
  4. Ernest Hemingway · 0.4828 − 1.4362i · 0.128 away · Compare side by side
  5. Mina Loy · 0.2365 − 1.3370i · 0.150 away · Compare side by side
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