Poem fractal

How to Be Happy

by Rose Hartwick Thorpe

18 July 1850 to 19 July 1939 (~89)

Browse poets 678

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. Richard Lovelace · −0.0086 − 0.7428i · 0.008 away · Compare side by side
  2. Amastan Ag Mohamed · −0.0138 − 0.7511i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  3. Carl Sandburg · −0.0027 − 0.7301i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  4. Wallace Stevens · −0.0123 − 0.7567i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  5. Carl Sandburg · 0.0222 − 0.7409i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
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