Poem fractal

December Night

by D. H. Lawrence

11 September 1885 to 2 March 1930 (~45)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Thus it would seem that the term unconscious is only another word for life.”

Condensing Lawrence's idea of the unconscious as the active source of living individuality · 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. Philip Arthur Larkin · 0.0536 − 0.7947i · 0.003 away · Compare side by side
  2. Anne Bradstreet · 0.0501 − 0.8093i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  3. Emily Dickinson · 0.0364 − 0.8041i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  4. Richard Lovelace · 0.0468 − 0.8120i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  5. Emily Dickinson · 0.0648 − 0.8083i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
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