Poem fractal

Southern Light

by D. H. Lawrence

11 September 1885 to 2 March 1930 (~45)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“There is in the nature of the infant that which is utterly unknown in the natures of the parents.”

Emphasising the irreducible newness of each individual life · 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. Emily Dickinson · −0.2558 − 0.9040i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  2. Emily Dickinson · −0.2547 − 0.8890i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  3. John Clare · −0.2451 − 0.8972i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  4. William Butler Yeats · −0.2347 − 0.9277i · 0.043 away · Compare side by side
  5. Ford Madox Hueffer · −0.2639 − 0.8659i · 0.045 away · Compare side by side
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