Poem fractal

Dregs

by Ernest Dowson

2 August 1867 to 23 February 1900 (~33)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I don't pretend to write verse seriously.”

A strikingly modest assessment from a writer whose reputation would rest chiefly on poetry · Letter to Arthur Moore, January 1889

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. Laurence Binyon · −0.5208 + 0.4031i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  2. Thomas Jordan · −0.5063 + 0.3911i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  3. Felicia Dorothea Hemans · −0.4671 + 0.4124i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
  4. Edwin Markham · −0.4999 + 0.3805i · 0.038 away · Compare side by side
  5. A. A. Milne · −0.4566 + 0.4253i · 0.045 away · Compare side by side
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