Poem fractal

No one cares less than I

by Edward Thomas

3 March 1878 to 9 April 1917 (~39)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The road is an old friend to me.”

Reflecting his enduring companionship with walking and the landscape · Prose writing and letters

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. Robert Herrick · −0.5645 − 0.1907i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  2. Percy Bysshe Shelley · −0.5520 − 0.1959i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  3. Arthur Symons · −0.5527 − 0.1755i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
  4. Wallace Stevens · −0.5381 − 0.1972i · 0.036 away · Compare side by side
  5. Dylan Thomas · −0.5517 − 0.2406i · 0.044 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content