Poem fractal

The Reading Mother

by Strickland Gillilan

21 September 1869 to 25 April 1954 (~85)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Evidently you are under the impression that I do this work for the fun I get out of hearing me.”

Dry professional humour about being asked to lecture for nothing · Typed letter declining an unpaid speaking invitation

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. Henry Van Dyke · −0.1580 − 0.3791i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  2. D. H. Lawrence · −0.1523 − 0.3664i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  3. Thomas Carew · −0.1833 − 0.3472i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  4. Theodore Henry Shackelford · −0.2082 − 0.3767i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
  5. Richard · −0.1695 − 0.3406i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
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