Poem fractal

The Tortoiseshell Cat

by Patrick Reginald Chalmers

27 June 1872 to 12 September 1942 (~70)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“So, my son, in Labradors, as in life, ever prefer brilliance in performance to a humdrum steadiness, which, though highly respectable, is forever humdrum, humdrum.”

Extending a judgement about dogs into a philosophy of life · Book, Gun-Dogs (1931), Labrador Retriever chapter

More remarks (29)

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. Ezra Pound · −0.1358 − 0.2050i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  2. William Wordsworth · −0.0850 − 0.2014i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  3. Juliusz Słowacki · −0.1350 − 0.1841i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
  4. Arthur Hugh Clough · −0.1366 − 0.2278i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
  5. Robert Burns · −0.0764 − 0.2180i · 0.037 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content