Poem fractal

The Cat and the Moon

by William Butler Yeats

13 June 1865 to 28 January 1939 (~74)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Our deceit will give us style, mastery, that dignity, that lofty and severe quality Verlaine spoke of.”

Suggesting that artistic restraint and transformation create style rather than simple confession · Essay, The Tree of Life

More remarks (81)

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. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. · −0.3077 + 0.9783i · 0.007 away · Compare side by side
  2. Wilfrid Wilson Gibson · −0.3170 + 0.9519i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  3. T. S. Eliot · −0.2751 + 0.9550i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
  4. James Oppenheim · −0.2736 + 0.9553i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
  5. Edgar Allan Poe · −0.2665 + 0.9755i · 0.037 away · Compare side by side
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