Poem fractal

The Dream Hunt

by Ford Madox Hueffer

17 December 1873 to 26 June 1939 (~66)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I wanted the Novelist in fact to appear in his really proud position as historian of his own time.”

Defining the novelist as a recorder and interpreter of contemporary history · It Was the Nightingale

More remarks (36)

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. Christina Rossetti · −0.2750 − 0.8633i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  2. Thomas Hardy · −0.2832 − 0.8576i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  3. William Blake · −0.2858 − 0.8634i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  4. Emily Dickinson · −0.2547 − 0.8890i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  5. Joseph Campbell · −0.2347 − 0.8793i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
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