Poem fractal

The Mood

by William Soutar

28 April 1898 to 15 October 1943 (~45)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I have stopped writing poetry since more than a year, I tell my friends, because the writing of poetry seems to me to be a dishonest occupation, a compromise, a deception.”

Records a period of profound doubt about the moral value of poetic activity · Diary, 1937

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. A. A. Milne · −0.1346 + 0.0375i · 0.008 away · Compare side by side
  2. Sir Thomas Wyatt · −0.1451 + 0.0389i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  3. Philip James Bailey · −0.1275 + 0.0418i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  4. Dylan Thomas · −0.1600 + 0.0368i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  5. Siegfried Sassoon · −0.1125 + 0.0296i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
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