Poem fractal

If it might be

by Stephen Phillips

28 July 1864 to 9 December 1915 (~51)

Browse poets 678

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. Emily Dickinson · −0.2451 − 1.0639i · 0.007 away · Compare side by side
  2. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.2471 − 1.0444i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  3. Emily Dickinson · −0.2493 − 1.0118i · 0.049 away · Compare side by side
  4. Grace Hazard Conkling · −0.2503 − 1.0074i · 0.054 away · Compare side by side
  5. T. S. Eliot · −0.2892 − 1.0031i · 0.069 away · Compare side by side
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