Poem fractal

Could I but ride indefinite

by Emily Dickinson

10 December 1830 to 15 May 1886 (~56)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet.”

Finding sweetness in life’s transience · Letter to Charles H. Clark, 1880

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. Hart Crane · 0.0669 − 1.0580i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  2. Bernard Barton · 0.0312 − 1.0332i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  3. Hilaire Belloc · 0.0294 − 1.0297i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
  4. Joseph Campbell · 0.0885 − 1.0576i · 0.039 away · Compare side by side
  5. Emily Dickinson · 0.0976 − 1.0819i · 0.053 away · Compare side by side
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