Poem fractal

Dry-Point

by Philip Arthur Larkin

9 August 1922 to 2 December 1985 (~63)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I can’t understand why people are so keen to put the clock back. What’s the point of going back to a time when you didn’t know as much?”

A defence of progress and a scepticism about romanticising the past · Interview

More remarks (4)

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. Richard · −0.4780 − 0.1347i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  2. Thomas Moore · −0.5170 − 0.1586i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  3. Banjo Paterson · −0.4905 − 0.1020i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
  4. Thomas Bailey Aldrich · −0.5043 − 0.1005i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
  5. Nixon Waterman · −0.4774 − 0.1095i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
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