Poem fractal

Lile Doad

by Frederic William Moorman

8 September 1872 to 8 September 1919 (~47)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I believe that the volume which the reader now holds in his hand is the first which is made up entirely of poems written in broad Yorkshire.”

Announcing a collection devoted wholly to the county tongue · Preface, Yorkshire Dialect Poems

More remarks (20)

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. A.E.Housman · −0.2432 − 0.5911i · 0.005 away · Compare side by side
  2. Alexander Anderson · −0.2489 − 0.5993i · 0.007 away · Compare side by side
  3. A. Mary F. Robinson · −0.2536 − 0.5989i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  4. Edgar Allan Poe · −0.2611 − 0.5963i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  5. Robert Herrick · −0.2606 − 0.6009i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
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