Poem fractal

In a Breton Cemetery

by Ernest Dowson

2 August 1867 to 23 February 1900 (~33)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I have broken my heart over her, but she remains, none the less, my sole interest in life.”

Expressing the consuming persistence of unrequited love despite emotional ruin · Letter to Arthur Moore

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. Alexander Montgomerie · −0.2872 − 0.5677i · 0.008 away · Compare side by side
  2. J.M. Synge · −0.2882 − 0.5551i · 0.010 away · Compare side by side
  3. Sara Teasdale · −0.2902 − 0.5559i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  4. Katharine Tynan Hinkson · −0.2953 − 0.5627i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  5. Thomas Moore · −0.2668 − 0.5453i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
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