Poem fractal

A Memory of Youth

by William Butler Yeats

13 June 1865 to 28 January 1939 (~74)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Art is not less the art of the people because it does not always speak in the language they are used to.”

Rejecting the idea that accessible art must always employ familiar language or conventions · Essay, Ireland and the Arts

More remarks (81)

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. Nora Hopper Chesson · −0.2276 − 0.3274i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  2. John Clare · −0.2532 − 0.3296i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  3. Charles Mackay · −0.2146 − 0.3473i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  4. Robert Nichols · −0.2166 − 0.3505i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  5. James Stephens · −0.2100 − 0.3384i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content