Poem fractal

The Too-Late Born

by Archibald MacLeish

7 May 1892 to 20 April 1982 (~90)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“What is freedom? Freedom is the right to choose: the right to create for oneself the alternatives of choice.”

Presenting freedom as active moral choice rather than simple absence of restraint · Essay on democracy

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 Lisle Bowles · −0.5100 + 0.6395i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  2. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.5053 + 0.6776i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.5478 + 0.6735i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
  4. Dylan Thomas · −0.5512 + 0.6747i · 0.038 away · Compare side by side
  5. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.5602 + 0.6614i · 0.038 away · Compare side by side
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