Poem fractal

The Word

by Edward Thomas

3 March 1878 to 9 April 1917 (~39)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I write poetry because I cannot help it.”

Presenting poetry as an involuntary rather than professional activity · Conversation, as reported in biographical accounts

More remarks (4)

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. D. H. Lawrence · −0.3194 + 1.2041i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  2. Cale Young Rice · −0.3824 + 1.1930i · 0.056 away · Compare side by side
  3. Dylan Thomas · −0.3983 + 1.2069i · 0.066 away · Compare side by side
  4. John Masefield · −0.2543 + 1.2281i · 0.080 away · Compare side by side
  5. Samuel Taylor Coleridge · −0.3348 + 1.1341i · 0.085 away · Compare side by side
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