Poem fractal

Silence

by D. H. Lawrence

11 September 1885 to 2 March 1930 (~45)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The vast bulk of consciousness is non-cerebral. It is the sap of our life, of all life.”

Expressing Lawrence's belief that consciousness extends beyond rational thought · 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. William Allingham · −0.4310 − 0.7325i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  2. John Vance Cheney · −0.4147 − 0.7290i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  3. Christina Rossetti · −0.4331 − 0.7279i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  4. Emily Dickinson · −0.4022 − 0.7228i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  5. Louis Untermeyer · −0.4042 − 0.7531i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
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