Poem fractal

Hope is a subtle glutton

by Emily Dickinson

10 December 1830 to 15 May 1886 (~56)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“My friends are my estate.”

Measuring wealth through friendship rather than possessions · Letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1870

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. William Blake · 0.1844 − 1.1704i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  2. Ernest Dowson · 0.1798 − 1.2133i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
  3. Ernest Dowson · 0.1547 − 1.1747i · 0.044 away · Compare side by side
  4. Countee Cullen · 0.1526 − 1.2177i · 0.054 away · Compare side by side
  5. Emily Dickinson · 0.1397 − 1.2200i · 0.067 away · Compare side by side
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