Poem fractal

Triad

by Adelaide Crapsey

9 September 1878 to 8 October 1914 (~36)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“If it's chronic tuberculosis, why that's what it is, and I'm just going to go ahead, find a way of living that's as little invalidish as possible, get what I can out of things and let it go at that.”

A programme of acceptance without surrender · Letter, after learning she would not return to Smith

More remarks (18)

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 · −0.5281 − 0.7621i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  2. A.E.Housman · −0.5795 − 0.8031i · 0.036 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.5841 − 0.8031i · 0.040 away · Compare side by side
  4. Marianne Moore · −0.5102 − 0.7679i · 0.042 away · Compare side by side
  5. Thomas Hood · −0.5282 − 0.8230i · 0.043 away · Compare side by side
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