Poem fractal

In a Cafe

by Francis Ledwidge

19 August 1887 to 31 July 1917 (~30)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“One by one my other brothers and sisters left school for the world until there were only left myself and my youngest brother and mother.”

Evokes childhood giving way early to the economic demands of adult life · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

More remarks (94)

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. T. S. Eliot · −0.1561 − 0.5366i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  2. William Wordsworth · −0.1499 − 0.5446i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  3. John Cooper · −0.1936 − 0.5252i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  4. Bliss Carman · −0.1498 − 0.5494i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Butler Yeats · −0.1711 − 0.5122i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
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