Poem fractal

Javanese Dancers

by Arthur Symons

28 February 1865 to 22 January 1945 (~80)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Patchouli! Well, why not Patchouli? Is there any 'reason in nature' why we should write exclusively about the natural blush if the delicately acquired blush of rouge has any attraction for us?”

A witty defence of the artificial as a fit subject for poetry · Preface, defence of the second edition of Silhouettes

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. Robert Herrick · −0.5645 − 0.1907i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  2. Percy Bysshe Shelley · −0.5520 − 0.1959i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  3. Wallace Stevens · −0.5381 − 0.1972i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  4. Edward Thomas · −0.5737 − 0.2023i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
  5. Thomas Moore · −0.5170 − 0.1586i · 0.039 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content