Poem fractal

Pastel

by Arthur Symons

28 February 1865 to 22 January 1945 (~80)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“In this endeavour to disengage the ultimate essence, the soul, of whatever exists, literature, bowed down by so many burdens, may at last attain liberty.”

His hope for literature freed from mere description of surfaces · The Symbolist Movement in Literature, 1899

More remarks (31)

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. Emily Dickinson · −0.4244 − 0.9664i · 0.008 away · Compare side by side
  2. Emily Dickinson · −0.4500 − 0.9605i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  3. Emily Dickinson · −0.4220 − 0.9399i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
  4. Christina Rossetti · −0.3979 − 0.9994i · 0.037 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Whiting · −0.4019 − 1.0050i · 0.038 away · Compare side by side
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