Poem fractal

Moonlit Apples

by John Drinkwater

1 June 1882 to 25 March 1937 (~55)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Great men are rare, poets are rarer, but the great man who is a poet, transfiguring his greatness, is the rarest of all events.”

Placing the union of poetic gift and human greatness at the highest level · Essay, The Lyric, What Is Lyric

More remarks (39)

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 Keats · −0.1852 + 0.3122i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  2. William Wordsworth · −0.1926 + 0.3020i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  3. Sir Walter Raleigh · −0.1896 + 0.2954i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  4. James Thomson · −0.1541 + 0.3047i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  5. Dylan Thomas · −0.1929 + 0.2924i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
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