Poem fractal

The Green River

by Alfred Douglas

22 October 1870 to 20 March 1945 (~75)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“It is astonishing how rapidly memories of that kind disappear.”

Reflecting on how quickly achievements can vanish from collective memory · The Autobiography of Lord Alfred Douglas, 1929

More remarks (20)

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. Ernest Hemingway · 0.1709 + 0.0840i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  2. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 0.1997 + 0.0912i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  3. John Donne · 0.1673 + 0.0874i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  4. Charles Kingsley · 0.1718 + 0.0952i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
  5. Edward James Mortimer Collins · 0.1804 + 0.1061i · 0.040 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content