Poem fractal

Waiting

by John Burroughs

3 April 1837 to 29 March 1921 (~84)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“How beautiful a day can be when one is touched by nature.”

Celebrating the renewing effect of direct contact with the natural world · Essay The Art of Seeing

More remarks (3)

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. Richard Lovelace · 0.1932 − 0.6267i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  2. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 0.2119 − 0.6291i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  3. John Donne · 0.2271 − 0.6112i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  4. Emily Dickinson · 0.2305 − 0.6077i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  5. Richard Jago · 0.1946 − 0.6485i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
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