Poem fractal

Sustaining Hope

by George Marion McClellan

29 September 1860 to 17 May 1934 (~74)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Whatever power any writing can have can only be in proportion to its real merit in the thought-world, regardless of all source from which it came.”

Arguing that literary merit should be judged by the quality of the thought rather than the writer’s race. · Essay, The Negro as a Writer

More remarks (9)

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 Edwards Hankinson · −0.1481 − 0.2643i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  2. Christina Rossetti · −0.1443 − 0.2343i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  3. Lord Byron · −0.1631 − 0.2589i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  4. Elizabeth Thomas · −0.1574 − 0.2714i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  5. Arthur Hugh Clough · −0.1366 − 0.2278i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
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