Poem fractal

Prodigy

by Alfred Kreymborg

10 December 1883 to 14 August 1966 (~83)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“We have to learn to live with one another, or we shall cease to live at all.”

A reflection on the necessity of human connection and mutual tolerance · Troubadour: An Autobiography

More remarks (3)

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. Sara Teasdale · 0.5278 − 1.1187i · 0.067 away · Compare side by side
  2. Dorothy Parker · 0.5347 − 1.1964i · 0.067 away · Compare side by side
  3. Fiona Macleod · 0.4828 − 1.1551i · 0.103 away · Compare side by side
  4. Emily Dickinson · 0.5021 − 1.2151i · 0.104 away · Compare side by side
  5. Langston Hughes · 0.6533 − 1.2394i · 0.111 away · Compare side by side
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