Poem fractal

Dog-Tired

by D. H. Lawrence

11 September 1885 to 2 March 1930 (~45)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The world doesn't fear a new idea. It can pigeon-hole any idea. But it can't pigeon-hole a real new experience.”

Contrasting the safety of categorised ideas with the disruption of genuine experience · 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. John Clare · −0.2532 − 0.3296i · 0.006 away · Compare side by side
  2. William Butler Yeats · −0.2332 − 0.3364i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  3. Joseph Addison · −0.2745 − 0.3026i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  4. Wilfred Owen · −0.2820 − 0.3441i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
  5. Nora Hopper Chesson · −0.2276 − 0.3274i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
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