Poem fractal

A Song of the Road

by Nora Hopper Chesson

2 January 1871 to 14 April 1906 (~35)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Nor need we doubt that the lucky man is he who is born on Christmas Day.”

Repeating an old belief with affectionate rather than sceptical amusement · Essay, Christmas Customs, English Illustrated Magazine, 1899

More remarks (33)

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. Langston Hughes · −0.1724 + 0.3513i · 0.004 away · Compare side by side
  2. D. H. Lawrence · −0.1595 + 0.3427i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  3. Thomas Carew · −0.1848 + 0.3558i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  4. James Elroy Flecker · −0.1859 + 0.3756i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Butler Yeats · −0.1937 + 0.3245i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
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