Poem fractal

Romance

by Witter Bynner

10 August 1881 to 1 June 1968 (~87)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“At the risk of criticism, I have made certain reasonable compromises.”

Frankly acknowledging the practical choices required when translating across cultures · Essay, Poetry and Culture, introduction to The Jade Mountain (1929)

More remarks (39)

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. Manuel Machado · 1.2680 − 0.9572i · 0.096 away · Compare side by side
  2. Emily Dickinson · 1.0661 − 0.9730i · 0.110 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 1.2888 − 0.9582i · 0.117 away · Compare side by side
  4. Emily Dickinson · 1.2898 − 0.9028i · 0.125 away · Compare side by side
  5. Langston Hughes · 1.0313 − 0.8833i · 0.154 away · Compare side by side
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