Poem fractal

The Appeal

by D. H. Lawrence

11 September 1885 to 2 March 1930 (~45)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Sometimes snakes can't slough. They can't burst their old skin. Then they go sick and die inside the old skin, and nobody ever sees the new pattern.”

Using the snake's skin as an image for the danger of failing to change · Critical study, Studies in Classic American Literature

More remarks (51)

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. Hart Crane · 0.1545 − 0.0627i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  2. Cale Young Rice · 0.1045 − 0.0226i · 0.037 away · Compare side by side
  3. Thomas Hoccleve · 0.1101 − 0.0913i · 0.041 away · Compare side by side
  4. John Donne · 0.1027 − 0.0929i · 0.046 away · Compare side by side
  5. Thomas Traherne · 0.0741 − 0.0427i · 0.052 away · Compare side by side
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