Poem fractal

Life is bitter

by William Ernest Henley

23 August 1849 to 11 July 1903 (~54)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Time and chance have gone demented, fate has turned comic poet, society has become its own parody, everybody is the irrepressible caricature of himself.”

Evoking comedy as a world where ordinary logic joyfully collapses · Essay, Labiche

More remarks (51)

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. Gwendolyn B. Bennett · 0.2536 + 0.3288i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  2. Richard · 0.2383 + 0.3061i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
  3. Siegfried Sassoon · 0.2787 + 0.3258i · 0.037 away · Compare side by side
  4. Philip Bourke Marston · 0.2602 + 0.3784i · 0.046 away · Compare side by side
  5. Francis Ledwidge · 0.2561 + 0.4003i · 0.066 away · Compare side by side
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