Poem fractal

Harvesting

by John Drinkwater

1 June 1882 to 25 March 1937 (~55)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“We find, in short, that this quality equals a maximum of imaginative pressure freeing itself in the best words in the best order.”

Defining poetic quality as imagination released through exact language · 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. Richard Edwardes · 0.0321 − 0.2595i · 0.005 away · Compare side by side
  2. Siegfried Sassoon · 0.0350 − 0.2386i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  3. Alfred Lord Tennyson · 0.0162 − 0.2350i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  4. Barry Cornwall · 0.0223 − 0.2324i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  5. Paul Laurence Dunbar · 0.0073 − 0.2372i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
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