Poem fractal

Pierrot

by Adelaide Crapsey

9 September 1878 to 8 October 1914 (~36)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The days, truth to tell, are rather long. I'm getting on well, cough better and at least a little sleep o' nights.”

Courage dressed as a weather report from the sanatorium · Letter to Esther Lowenthal, Saranac Lake

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. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · −0.1929 − 1.2969i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  2. Alice Corbin · −0.1528 − 1.2608i · 0.062 away · Compare side by side
  3. William Blake · −0.1124 − 1.3004i · 0.068 away · Compare side by side
  4. Robert Browning · −0.1489 − 1.2491i · 0.074 away · Compare side by side
  5. Edward FitzGerald · −0.2048 − 1.2347i · 0.087 away · Compare side by side
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