Poem fractal

Loss

by Hilda Doolittle

10 September 1886 to 27 September 1961 (~75)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“There is no trouble about the art, it is the appreciators we want.”

Locating the problem not in great art but in our capacity to perceive it · Essay, Notes on Thought and Vision

More remarks (42)

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. W. H. Davies · −0.1771 − 0.7942i · 0.005 away · Compare side by side
  2. Dylan Thomas · −0.1837 − 0.8007i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  3. Emily Dickinson · −0.1600 − 0.7873i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  4. G. K. Chesterton · −0.1646 − 0.7747i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  5. Anne Brontë · −0.1677 − 0.7630i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
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