Poem fractal

The Cuckoo Sings

by Paul-Jean Toulet

5 June 1867 to 6 September 1920 (~53)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Les mots sont comme les hommes : ils ont leur pudeur.”

Suggesting that language, like human character, has limits and delicacies · Aphorism, attributed to Paul-Jean Toulet

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. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 1.2888 − 0.9582i · 0.080 away · Compare side by side
  2. Manuel Machado · 1.2680 − 0.9572i · 0.100 away · Compare side by side
  3. Emily Dickinson · 1.2898 − 0.9028i · 0.111 away · Compare side by side
  4. Witter Bynner · 1.1723 − 0.9453i · 0.195 away · Compare side by side
  5. James Joyce · 1.2785 − 1.1869i · 0.219 away · Compare side by side
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