Poem fractal

Fishmonger

by Marsden Hartley

4 January 1877 to 2 September 1943 (~66)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“What I have to express is not handled with words. It must come to the observer. It must carry its influence over the mind of the individual into that region of him which is more than the mind.”

Insisting that art reaches beyond language into deeper experience · Letter to Alfred Stieglitz, 28 September 1913

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. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu · 0.0396 + 0.3863i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  2. Ralph Waldo Emerson · 0.0722 + 0.3455i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 0.1263 + 0.3714i · 0.057 away · Compare side by side
  4. Kahlil Gibran · 0.1281 + 0.3757i · 0.058 away · Compare side by side
  5. Robert Louis Stevenson · 0.1300 + 0.3871i · 0.060 away · Compare side by side
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