Poem fractal

On Being Brought from Africa to America

by Phillis Wheatley

c. 1753 to 5 December 1784 (~31)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“It is not impossible that some of the most learned and polished nations of the world may be found to have sprung from Africa.”

Challenging racist assumptions about African civilisation and intellectual achievement · Letter to Samson Occom, 1774

More remarks (4)

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. Philip Bourke Marston · −0.0046 + 0.1955i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  2. Ella Wheeler Wilcox · −0.0056 + 0.1861i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  3. Thomas Hardy · −0.0084 + 0.1839i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  4. Amelia Alderson Opie · 0.0284 + 0.1863i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  5. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 0.0282 + 0.2185i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
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