Poem fractal

Firewood

by Katharine Lee Bates

12 August 1859 to 28 March 1929 (~70)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Through Sigurd our circle of fellowship was widened for all time.”

Reflecting on how companionship can enlarge one's sense of fellowship · Sigurd Our Golden Collie and Other Comrades of the Road

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. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.3512 − 0.8584i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  2. May
    Edward Hovell-Thurlow · −0.3348 − 0.8766i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  3. Thomas Hardy · −0.3487 − 0.8535i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  4. Emily Dickinson · −0.3821 − 0.8485i · 0.041 away · Compare side by side
  5. Amy Levy · −0.3114 − 0.8546i · 0.041 away · Compare side by side
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