Poem fractal

The Three Witches

by Ernest Dowson

2 August 1867 to 23 February 1900 (~33)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I have done nothing, seen nothing, nobody, the week. Simply sat here and otherwise, plumbing the depths of repression, in various bottomless, black pits of pessimism.”

Turning inactivity and depression into characteristically elaborate self-mockery · Letter to Victor Plarr, early 1890s

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. John Crowe Ransom · 0.1931 − 0.7608i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  2. Lord Byron · 0.1856 − 0.7683i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  3. A. A. Milne · 0.2183 − 0.7350i · 0.037 away · Compare side by side
  4. Thomas Randolph · 0.2259 − 0.7355i · 0.039 away · Compare side by side
  5. Charles Sorley · 0.2056 − 0.8115i · 0.041 away · Compare side by side
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