Poem fractal

Submergence

by D. H. Lawrence

11 September 1885 to 2 March 1930 (~45)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I want to go south, where there is no autumn, where the cold doesn't crouch over one like a snow leopard waiting to pounce.”

Turning dislike of northern cold into a characteristically physical image · Letter to John Middleton Murry, 3 October 1924

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. Robert Burns · 0.0714 − 0.5838i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  2. Charles Wesley · 0.0994 − 0.5714i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  3. Emily Dickinson · 0.1043 − 0.6036i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  4. Thomas Osbert Mordaunt · 0.0631 − 0.5802i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  5. George Herbert · 0.0723 − 0.5646i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
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