Poem fractal

The Little Beach-Bird

by Richard Henry Dana

15 November 1787 to 2 February 1879 (~92)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“There was certainly some mistake about the time of my birth—I'm an impersonated Anachronism.”

Voicing a sense of belonging to an earlier, more ordered age amid rapid modern change · Letter to a friend

More remarks (1)

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. Robert Frost · −0.5775 − 0.3828i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  2. Emily Dickinson · −0.5890 − 0.3663i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  3. Dylan Thomas · −0.5894 − 0.4124i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  4. Daniel Webster Davis · −0.5873 − 0.4201i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
  5. Emily Dickinson · −0.6146 − 0.4169i · 0.040 away · Compare side by side
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