Poem fractal

The Wealth of Nothing

by Elizabeth Devereux

12 March 1934 to 29 July 2023 (~89)

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. Patrick Reginald Chalmers · −1.0532 − 0.6533i · 0.010 away · Compare side by side
  2. Age
    William Bell Scott · −1.1026 − 0.6588i · 0.058 away · Compare side by side
  3. Oliver Goldsmith · −0.9719 − 0.5912i · 0.093 away · Compare side by side
  4. Alfred Lord Tennyson · −0.9967 − 0.5681i · 0.093 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Hughes Mearns · −1.0253 − 0.7420i · 0.096 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content