Poem fractal

The Dying Swan

by T. Sturge Moore

4 March 1870 to 18 July 1944 (~74)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The artist is not a different kind of person, but every person is a different kind of artist.”

Expressing the idea that artistic creativity is a human potential rather than a special status · Prose remark, commonly attributed to T. Sturge Moore

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. William Cowper · −0.6518 − 0.0488i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  2. Dylan Thomas · −0.6644 − 0.0433i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  3. Emily Dickinson · −0.6435 − 0.0825i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  4. John Masefield · −0.6456 − 0.0300i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Blake · −0.6320 − 0.0928i · 0.039 away · Compare side by side
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