Poem fractal

Storm

by Hilda Doolittle

10 September 1886 to 27 September 1961 (~75)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Memory is the mother, begetter of all drama, idea, music, science or song.”

Presenting memory as the source from which creative and intellectual life emerges · 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. Thomas Hardy · −0.3404 − 0.9499i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  2. Thomas Weelkes · −0.3153 − 0.9523i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  3. Louise Chandler Moulton · −0.3222 − 0.9578i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  4. Emily Dickinson · −0.3529 − 0.9232i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  5. Elinor Wylie · −0.3522 − 0.9566i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
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