Poem fractal

Michael-Angelo

by D. H. Lawrence

11 September 1885 to 2 March 1930 (~45)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Individuality appears in defiance of all scientific law, in defiance even of reason.”

Asserting the mystery of individual existence against purely mechanical explanation · Book, Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious

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. Wilfred Owen · −0.5607 + 0.3179i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  2. Wilfred Owen · −0.5484 + 0.3171i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  3. Dante Gabriel Rossetti · −0.5659 + 0.3375i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
  4. William Butler Yeats · −0.5910 + 0.3054i · 0.036 away · Compare side by side
  5. George Kirbye · −0.5194 + 0.3155i · 0.038 away · Compare side by side
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