Poem fractal

Doubt

by Sir Lewis Morris

23 January 1833 to 12 November 1907 (~74)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Of the modern vice of obscurity I can hardly bring myself to speak, because for the moment the merit of a poem is by many excellent people measured by its obscurity.”

Rejecting the notion that difficulty is itself evidence of poetic merit · Essay, Some Thoughts on Modern Poetry (1891)

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. William Blake · −0.4519 − 0.2872i · 0.006 away · Compare side by side
  2. Richard Realf · −0.4482 − 0.3048i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  3. J.M. Synge · −0.4549 − 0.2792i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  4. Owen Seaman · −0.4474 − 0.3079i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  5. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.4406 − 0.3017i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content