Poem fractal

October's Bright Blue Weather

by Helen Hunt Jackson

15 October 1830 to 12 August 1885 (~55)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“My Century of Dishonor and Ramona are the only things I have done of which I am glad. They will live, and they will bear fruit.”

Reflecting on the works she believed would endure and continue her reform cause · Letter near the end of her life

More remarks (12)

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. Dylan Thomas · −0.6171 − 0.6058i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  2. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.6289 − 0.6302i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  3. Emily Dickinson · −0.6083 − 0.6321i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  4. Robert Bridges · −0.6549 − 0.5846i · 0.036 away · Compare side by side
  5. G. K. Chesterton · −0.6026 − 0.6459i · 0.045 away · Compare side by side
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