Poem fractal

Thoughts

by Myra Viola Wilds

c. 1880 to c. 1935 (~55)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Every line and verse in this little volume has been composed and written with my own hand notwithstanding the loss of my eyesight.”

Affirming authorship and agency after blindness from overwork · Preface, Thoughts of Idle Hours, 1915

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. Thomas Moore · −0.1917 − 0.4942i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  2. Yone Noguchi · −0.2035 − 0.4996i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  3. William Butler Yeats · −0.1711 − 0.5122i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  4. William Wordsworth · −0.1880 − 0.4858i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  5. Richard · −0.2039 − 0.4924i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
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