Poem fractal

The Fellowship

by Katharine Lee Bates

12 August 1859 to 28 March 1929 (~70)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Where the narrative is highly colored by emotion, the ballad merges into the lyric. It is difficult here to draw the line of distinction.”

Recognising how literary forms naturally overlap when narrative becomes intensely emotional · Introduction to Ballad Book

More remarks (14)

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. Thomas Flatman · −0.4259 − 0.1478i · 0.006 away · Compare side by side
  2. Anne Spencer · −0.4258 − 0.1449i · 0.007 away · Compare side by side
  3. Thomas Hardy · −0.4251 − 0.1567i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  4. Robert Burns · −0.4243 − 0.1610i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  5. Dylan Thomas · −0.3980 − 0.1427i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
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