Poem fractal

Mrs. Willow

by John Drinkwater

1 June 1882 to 25 March 1937 (~55)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Both are poetry, springing from the same imaginative activity, living through the same perfect selection and ordering of words, and, in our response, quickening the same ecstasy.”

Finding a common imaginative source beneath different poetic forms · Essay, The Lyric, Lyric Forms

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. Alice Meynell · −0.5505 + 0.3725i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  2. Dylan Thomas · −0.5681 + 0.3586i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  3. Allan Cunningham · −0.6056 + 0.3777i · 0.040 away · Compare side by side
  4. A. A. Milne · −0.5762 + 0.3424i · 0.046 away · Compare side by side
  5. Laurence Binyon · −0.5208 + 0.4031i · 0.048 away · Compare side by side
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