Poem fractal

Garden

by Hilda Doolittle

10 September 1886 to 27 September 1961 (~75)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Into that over-mind, thoughts pass and are visible like fish swimming under clear water.”

Portraying thought as something perceived rather than deliberately manufactured · 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. A. A. Milne · 0.0319 − 1.3164i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  2. Edward Thomas · 0.0197 − 1.2730i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  3. Emily Dickinson · −0.0199 − 1.2667i · 0.058 away · Compare side by side
  4. Bede the Venerable · 0.0694 − 1.2621i · 0.061 away · Compare side by side
  5. Ernest Hemingway · 0.0868 − 1.2504i · 0.082 away · Compare side by side
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