Poem fractal

Not Poor

by Elizabeth Prentiss

26 October 1818 to 13 August 1878 (~60)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Life is short, and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those travelling this dark journey with us. Oh, be swift to love, make haste to be kind.”

A tender call to use limited time for love and kindness · Novel prose, commonly attributed to Stepping Heavenward

More remarks (30)

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. Emily Dickinson · 0.0715 − 0.7212i · 0.007 away · Compare side by side
  2. Anne Bradstreet · 0.0916 − 0.7217i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edward Lear · 0.0730 − 0.7412i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  4. Douglas Hyde · 0.1096 − 0.7274i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
  5. John Wilmot · 0.0933 − 0.7543i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
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