Poem fractal

Fortune

by Lizette Woodworth Reese

9 January 1856 to 17 December 1935 (~79)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Thrice blessed are they whose early years are spent in some countryside. The flowering and withering of the seasons, and every exquisite sound and sight make them affluent with a treasure which neither change nor chance can steal away.”

Praising the lasting wealth of rural childhood · A Victorian Village: Reminiscences of Other Days, 1929

More remarks (2)

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. Sir Thomas Wyatt · 0.4346 − 0.7987i · 0.004 away · Compare side by side
  2. Ella Wheeler Wilcox · 0.4550 − 0.7773i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  3. Sara Teasdale · 0.4621 − 0.7808i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
  4. Ralph Waldo Emerson · 0.4630 − 0.7790i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  5. Lady Nairne · 0.4649 − 0.8146i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
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