Poem fractal

Drake's Drum

by Henry Newbolt

6 June 1862 to 19 April 1938 (~76)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The test of a poem is that it should be memorable.”

A concise standard for judging poetry by its lasting effect on memory. · Essay on poetry

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. Edward Lear · −0.1661 + 0.6430i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  2. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.1858 + 0.6412i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  3. Claude McKay · −0.1616 + 0.6573i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  4. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.1936 + 0.6430i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  5. Alfred Austin · −0.1469 + 0.6486i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
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