Poem fractal

An Hymn to the Evening

by Phillis Wheatley

c. 1753 to 5 December 1784 (~31)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“That it was not the small-pox that brought me to America, but I was brought from Africa to America.”

Recalling the circumstances of her enslavement with directness and moral force · 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. Edgar Lee Masters · −0.2648 + 0.1027i · 0.005 away · Compare side by side
  2. Ella Wheeler Wilcox · −0.2654 + 0.0956i · 0.008 away · Compare side by side
  3. Thomas Hood · −0.2813 + 0.1032i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  4. Edith M. Thomas · −0.2540 + 0.1066i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  5. Anna Lætitia Barbauld · −0.2804 + 0.0883i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
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