Poem fractal

November

by Elizabeth Stoddard

6 May 1823 to 1 August 1902 (~79)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“With me, if you start in a friendship, you will have to begin and go on—with entire, perhaps disagreeable truth, candor, sincerity. There is not one particle of ‘nonsense’ about me. I cannot stand blarney, roundaboutedness.”

Insisting on uncompromising honesty as the foundation of true friendship · Letter to Elizabeth Akers Allen, December 1873

More remarks (20)

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. J.M. Synge · −0.1748 − 0.0167i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  2. John Donne · −0.1472 − 0.0366i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  3. Sir William Davenant · −0.1255 − 0.0131i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  4. Amelia Alderson Opie · −0.1732 − 0.0292i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  5. Hart Crane · −0.1675 − 0.0343i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
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