Poem fractal

The Rhodora

by Ralph Waldo Emerson

25 May 1803 to 27 April 1882 (~79)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“We do not know to-day whether we are busy or idle. In times when we thought ourselves indolent, we have afterwards discovered that much was accomplished, and much was begun in us.”

Questions our ability to judge the true significance of the present moment · Essay, Experience (1844)

More remarks (85)

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. A. A. Milne · −0.0168 + 0.3106i · 0.007 away · Compare side by side
  2. Sara Teasdale · 0.0072 + 0.2972i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  3. Robert Browning · −0.0333 + 0.3072i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  4. Algernon Charles Swinburne · −0.0334 + 0.3120i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  5. Charles Whitehead · 0.0023 + 0.3402i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
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