Poem fractal

Vanity of Vanities

by Helen Hunt Jackson

15 October 1830 to 12 August 1885 (~55)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“It is a sorrowful thing to think of, that the United States has never kept one treaty made with the Indians.”

A forceful indictment of broken promises and historical injustice · A Century of Dishonor

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. Nora Hopper Chesson · 0.2819 − 0.4099i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  2. Vachel Lindsay · 0.2833 − 0.4356i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  3. William Butler Yeats · 0.2800 − 0.4451i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  4. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 0.2761 − 0.3913i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
  5. Thomas Hardy · 0.2437 − 0.4361i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
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