Poem fractal

Break of Day in the Trenches

by Isaac Rosenberg

25 November 1890 to 1 April 1918 (~28)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I am not a poet, I am a painter.”

The wording is widely attributed to Rosenberg, but a securely identified primary source is difficult to establish · Conversation or correspondence, as commonly attributed

More remarks (1)

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. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt · 0.1059 + 0.9588i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  2. Richard Monckton Milnes · 0.1217 + 0.9318i · 0.043 away · Compare side by side
  3. Arthur O'Shaughnessy · 0.0979 + 0.9161i · 0.065 away · Compare side by side
  4. William Wordsworth · 0.0392 + 1.0015i · 0.089 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Blake · 0.0624 + 0.9045i · 0.094 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content