Poem fractal

Nostalgia

by D. H. Lawrence

11 September 1885 to 2 March 1930 (~45)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Beware of absolutes. There are many gods.”

A brief warning against reducing life to a single final principle · Critical study, Studies in Classic American Literature

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. Nora Hopper Chesson · −0.1723 + 0.3477i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  2. Langston Hughes · −0.1724 + 0.3513i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  3. Thomas Carew · −0.1848 + 0.3558i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  4. James Thomson · −0.1541 + 0.3047i · 0.038 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Butler Yeats · −0.1937 + 0.3245i · 0.039 away · Compare side by side
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