Poem fractal

To a Snail

by Marianne Moore

15 November 1887 to 5 February 1972 (~85)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads.”

Defining poetry as imaginative art grounded in the vivid realities of life · Statement on poetry, as commonly attributed

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. Sir Philip Sidney · 0.3488 + 0.3059i · 0.042 away · Compare side by side
  2. William Shakespeare · 0.3597 + 0.2635i · 0.050 away · Compare side by side
  3. Wallace Stevens · 0.3483 + 0.2732i · 0.052 away · Compare side by side
  4. D. H. Lawrence · 0.3532 + 0.3494i · 0.060 away · Compare side by side
  5. If-
    Rudyard Kipling · 0.4066 + 0.3735i · 0.072 away · Compare side by side
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