Poem fractal

Evil

by Arthur Davison Ficke

10 November 1883 to 30 November 1945 (~62)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The quietest moments often contain the loudest truths.”

Noting how stillness brings clarity and inner realization · Personal Correspondence

More remarks (6)

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. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.0825 − 0.9198i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  2. Dante Gabriel Rossetti · −0.0890 − 0.9235i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  3. Emily Dickinson · −0.0599 − 0.9748i · 0.036 away · Compare side by side
  4. James Joyce · −0.0294 − 0.9231i · 0.040 away · Compare side by side
  5. Christina Rossetti · −0.0481 − 0.9837i · 0.048 away · Compare side by side
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