Poem fractal

Tableau

by Countee Cullen

30 May 1903 to 9 January 1946 (~43)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“There may have been many things in my life that have hurt me, and I find that the surest relief from these hurts is in writing.”

Treats composition as a practical remedy for private and public wounds · Remark, 1926, as quoted by Stephen H. Bronz

More remarks (27)

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 · −0.7467 − 0.6819i · 0.003 away · Compare side by side
  2. John Keats · −0.7154 − 0.6513i · 0.040 away · Compare side by side
  3. Robert Herrick · −0.7095 − 0.6494i · 0.046 away · Compare side by side
  4. Carl Sandburg · −0.7538 − 0.7296i · 0.051 away · Compare side by side
  5. Emily Dickinson · −0.7915 − 0.7157i · 0.059 away · Compare side by side
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