Poem fractal

Sunny Shower

by William Soutar

28 April 1898 to 15 October 1943 (~45)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“It is a kind of private paper which demands its quota of news every day, and not rarely becomes a mere recorder of spiritual journalese.”

Mocks the pressure to manufacture significance merely to fill a diary · Diary, 1934

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. Edgar Allan Poe · −0.7473 + 0.2006i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
  2. Francis Ledwidge · −0.6789 + 0.1579i · 0.050 away · Compare side by side
  3. Siegfried Sassoon · −0.6799 + 0.1433i · 0.056 away · Compare side by side
  4. Stephen Crane · −0.6617 + 0.1827i · 0.065 away · Compare side by side
  5. Emily Dickinson · −0.6937 + 0.2337i · 0.067 away · Compare side by side
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