Poem fractal

For a Picture of Watteau

by Arthur Symons

28 February 1865 to 22 January 1945 (~80)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Whistler tricks life and the world into beauty by accepting in them only what suits his purpose, as indeed every artist must do.”

On selection as the artist's essential, unavoidable trick · Critical essay on the painting of G. F. Watts, 1900

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 · 0.0348 − 1.0072i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  2. Hilaire Belloc · 0.0294 − 1.0297i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  3. Bernard Barton · 0.0312 − 1.0332i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
  4. A. A. Milne · 0.0028 − 1.0101i · 0.040 away · Compare side by side
  5. Bliss Carman · 0.0536 − 0.9519i · 0.051 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content