Poem fractal

Seraphita

by Ernest Dowson

2 August 1867 to 23 February 1900 (~33)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I have made an endeavour to-day to read the Philoktetes; compassing about 50 lines; it's a distinct grind but I think necessary, if one is not altogether to lose the habit of Greek.”

A candid glimpse of the discipline Dowson thought necessary to maintain his classical learning · Letter to Arthur Moore, 1890

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. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 0.0252 + 0.5537i · 0.004 away · Compare side by side
  2. Gerard Manley Hopkins · −0.0007 + 0.5568i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  3. Amy Lowell · −0.0062 + 0.5475i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
  4. Edgar Lee Masters · 0.0009 + 0.5232i · 0.039 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Wordsworth · 0.0675 + 0.5585i · 0.040 away · Compare side by side
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