Poem fractal

Orchard

by Hilda Doolittle

10 September 1886 to 27 September 1961 (~75)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“She is the island of artistic perfection where the lover of ancient beauty may yet find foothold.”

Presenting Sappho as a sustaining refuge and model for later artists · Essay, The Wise Sappho

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. Matthew Arnold · 0.0098 − 0.8966i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  2. Emily Dickinson · 0.0099 − 0.8996i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
  3. James Joyce · −0.0294 − 0.9231i · 0.038 away · Compare side by side
  4. Robert Burns · −0.0003 − 0.8500i · 0.041 away · Compare side by side
  5. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 0.0210 − 0.8719i · 0.041 away · Compare side by side
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