Poem fractal

Dirge

by Gerald Massey

29 May 1828 to 29 October 1907 (~79)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“There are conditions in which many of the poor exist, where humanity must be either rebel or slave. For the slave, degradation and moral death are certain; but for the rebel there is always a chance of becoming conqueror.”

Insisting that resistance offers dignity where submission does not · Preface to the third edition of Babe Christabel (1854)

More remarks (3)

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. Matthew Prior · 0.1233 − 0.1936i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  2. Thomas Hardy · 0.1737 − 0.1781i · 0.041 away · Compare side by side
  3. Wallace Stevens · 0.1695 − 0.1672i · 0.046 away · Compare side by side
  4. E. Nesbit · 0.0959 − 0.2184i · 0.047 away · Compare side by side
  5. Nora Hopper Chesson · 0.0985 − 0.2284i · 0.049 away · Compare side by side
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