Poem fractal

Defeat

by Kahlil Gibran

6 January 1883 to 10 April 1931 (~48)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The difference between a prophet and a poet is that the prophet lives what he teaches—and the poet does not. He may write wonderfully of love, and yet not be loving.”

The gap between sung virtue and lived virtue · Remark to Mary Haskell while working on The Prophet

More remarks (54)

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. Thomas Moore · 0.0933 + 0.2280i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  2. D. H. Lawrence · 0.1101 + 0.2458i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  3. Philip Arthur Larkin · 0.0879 + 0.2250i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  4. Amelia Alderson Opie · 0.1270 + 0.2504i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  5. Edwin Arlington Robinson · 0.0965 + 0.2000i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
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