Poem fractal

Quest

by Arthur Symons

28 February 1865 to 22 January 1945 (~80)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Literature has to make use of words and facts; these words, these facts, are the common property of all the world.”

On the shared, unglamorous raw material every writer must transform · Introduction, Studies in Prose and Verse

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. Anne Brontë · −0.1667 − 0.7433i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  2. Richard · −0.1341 − 0.7495i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  3. A.E.Housman · −0.1513 − 0.7232i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  4. Stephen Crane · −0.1695 − 0.7303i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  5. Mathilde Blind · −0.1491 − 0.7647i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
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