Poem fractal

Crisis

by Robert Nichols

6 September 1893 to 17 December 1944 (~51)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“We are so impressed by the power of poetry that we think of it as something made by a wonderful and unusual person: we do not realize that all the wonder and marvel is in our own brains, that the poet is ourselves.”

Places the poet among ordinary speakers rather than above them · Introduction, Ardours and Endurances, 1917 (quoting and endorsing Mark Liddell)

More remarks (10)

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. William Wordsworth · −0.3950 + 0.0781i · 0.003 away · Compare side by side
  2. George William Russell · −0.3830 + 0.0794i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  3. John Farmer · −0.4144 + 0.0813i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  4. William Bell Scott · −0.4153 + 0.0658i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  5. Claude McKay · −0.4148 + 0.0893i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
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