Poem fractal

Sickness

by D. H. Lawrence

11 September 1885 to 2 March 1930 (~45)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Life is ours to be spent, not to be saved.”

Urging active engagement with life rather than excessive self-preservation · Essay

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. Mary Webb · −0.1816 + 0.1961i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  2. Laurence Binyon · −0.1954 + 0.1984i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  3. William Cullen Bryant · −0.1980 + 0.1663i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  4. Dylan Thomas · −0.1667 + 0.1726i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  5. G. K. Chesterton · −0.2068 + 0.1702i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
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