Poem fractal

In Tempore Senectutis

by Ernest Dowson

2 August 1867 to 23 February 1900 (~33)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I have always had, alas, too much of that swift, disastrous & suicidal energy which destroyed our dear & incomparable Verlaine.”

Dowson recognising in himself something of the destructive intensity he associated with Verlaine · Letter to Arthur Symons, 5 July 1896

More remarks (40)

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. Katherine Philips · 0.1408 − 0.5332i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  2. Robert Burns · 0.1410 − 0.5304i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  3. Charles Mackay · 0.1405 − 0.5221i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  4. Robert Herrick · 0.1330 − 0.5174i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  5. Henry Carey · 0.1403 − 0.5149i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
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