Poem fractal

Old Susan

by Walter de la Mare

25 April 1873 to 22 June 1956 (~83)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Only the rarest kind of best is good enough for the young.”

A conviction that children deserve writing of the highest quality and seriousness. · Essay, On the Art of Writing

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. G. K. Chesterton · −0.3612 + 0.9280i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  2. William Ernest Henley · −0.3865 + 0.9197i · 0.041 away · Compare side by side
  3. Dylan Thomas · −0.3964 + 0.9220i · 0.051 away · Compare side by side
  4. Wilfrid Wilson Gibson · −0.3170 + 0.9519i · 0.052 away · Compare side by side
  5. Alexander Pope · −0.3975 + 0.9204i · 0.052 away · Compare side by side
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