Poem fractal

He Likens Her to a Rose-Tree, Himself to the Wind

by F. S. Flint

19 December 1885 to 28 February 1960 (~75)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Direct treatment of the “thing”, whether subjective or objective.”

Calls for immediate presentation rather than indirect explanation · Essay “Imagisme” (1913)

More remarks (2)

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. Rupert Brooke · 0.0254 − 0.1375i · 0.002 away · Compare side by side
  2. Edgar Allan Poe · 0.0146 − 0.1327i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  3. Dylan Thomas · 0.0141 − 0.1368i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  4. Mark Alexander Boyd · 0.0335 − 0.1513i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  5. Mary Coleridge · 0.0230 − 0.1643i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
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