Poem fractal

The Wolves

by John Townsend Trowbridge

18 September 1827 to 12 February 1916 (~89)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I still go back occasionally to the old Leaves of Grass and find in them the same unfailing freshness and power, which repeated readings in no wise dull to the sense—a test which only master studies in literature can stand.”

Praise of lasting freshness as the mark of a master work · Letter to Walt Whitman, 30 April 1875

More remarks (7)

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. Samuel Rogers · −0.6102 − 0.4422i · 0.006 away · Compare side by side
  2. Arthur Shearly Cripps · −0.5995 − 0.4460i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  3. William Makepeace Thackeray · −0.6264 − 0.4600i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  4. Edmund Waller · −0.6313 − 0.4613i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  5. Emily Dickinson · −0.6146 − 0.4169i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
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