Poem fractal

The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God

by J. Milton Hayes

1884 to 1940 (~56)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I wrote The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God in five hours, but I had it all planned out. It isn't poetry and it does not pretend to be, but it does what it sets out to do.”

On the deliberate craft of popular dramatic monologue rather than high poetry · Conversation, reported by Alec Waugh in My Brother Evelyn and Other Profiles (1967)

More remarks (1)

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. Dorothy Greenwell · −0.3565 + 0.6129i · 0.008 away · Compare side by side
  2. Richard · −0.3463 + 0.6323i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.3670 + 0.5883i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  4. John Keats · −0.3166 + 0.6291i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
  5. Algernon Charles Swinburne · −0.3446 + 0.5765i · 0.037 away · Compare side by side
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