Poem fractal

Renascence

by D. H. Lawrence

11 September 1885 to 2 March 1930 (~45)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The truth of the matter is, one cannot go back. Some men can: renegade. But Melville couldn't go back: and Gauguin couldn't really go back: and I know now that I could never go back.”

Reflecting on the impossibility of recovering an abandoned past unchanged · 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. Dylan Thomas · −0.4717 + 0.0871i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  2. Nora Hopper Chesson · −0.4519 + 0.1005i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  3. Thomas Moore · −0.4638 + 0.0832i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  4. W. H. Davies · −0.4734 + 0.1143i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  5. Dylan Thomas · −0.4811 + 0.1115i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
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