Poem fractal

Oh, Earth!

by Sir Lewis Morris

23 January 1833 to 12 November 1907 (~74)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Obscure poems, obscure in subject or in treatment, can never be poetry at all, can never awake a noble emotion, or stimulate the heart or the soul.”

Insisting that poetry should communicate strongly enough to move its reader · Essay, Some Thoughts on Modern Poetry (1891)

More remarks (39)

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. Thomas Shadwell · −0.5119 − 0.6098i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  2. William Ernest Henley · −0.5263 − 0.5779i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  3. Richard · −0.5424 − 0.6297i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
  4. J. C. Squire · −0.5483 − 0.5757i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Cullen Bryant · −0.4982 − 0.5830i · 0.039 away · Compare side by side
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