Poem fractal

Eyes

by Arthur Symons

28 February 1865 to 22 January 1945 (~80)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Sometimes I say to myself, How great a burden of love is taken off my heart! It is horrible to have one's heart in an even balance.”

On the strange discomfort of a heart no longer weighed down by attachment · Prose introduction to poems written after the death of his dog

More remarks (31)

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. Ralph Waldo Emerson · 0.0929 − 0.6735i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  2. Dylan Thomas · 0.0894 − 0.6664i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  3. Mathilde Blind · 0.1086 − 0.7017i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  4. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 0.0615 − 0.6902i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
  5. Robert Herrick · 0.1193 − 0.6643i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
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