Poem fractal

Written After a Snow-Storm

by Clement Clarke Moore

15 July 1779 to 10 July 1863 (~84)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“In spite of all the cares and sorrows of this life, he thinks we are so constituted that a good honest hearty laugh, which conceals no malice, and is excited by nothing corrupt, however ungenteel it may be, is healthful both to body and mind.”

Defending simple mirth as a natural and beneficial human capacity · Preface to Poems (1844)

More remarks (1)

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 · −0.3248 − 0.7064i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  2. T. S. Eliot · −0.3298 − 0.6841i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  3. Leslie Pinckney Hill · −0.3159 − 0.6917i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  4. Henry Augustin Beers · −0.3378 − 0.6762i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  5. Samuel Johnson · −0.3345 − 0.7195i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
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