Poem fractal

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by Hilda Doolittle

10 September 1886 to 27 September 1961 (~75)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“We cannot have the heat without the lump of coal.”

Emphasising that spiritual or creative intensity depends upon physical existence · 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. Emily Dickinson · 0.3477 − 0.9772i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  2. Christina Rossetti · 0.3759 − 0.9198i · 0.045 away · Compare side by side
  3. Wallace Stevens · 0.3042 − 0.9285i · 0.051 away · Compare side by side
  4. John Banister Tabb · 0.3783 − 0.9008i · 0.062 away · Compare side by side
  5. Ernest Dowson · 0.2883 − 0.9733i · 0.062 away · Compare side by side
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