Poem fractal

Seashore

by Ralph Waldo Emerson

25 May 1803 to 27 April 1882 (~79)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Life is a series of surprises. We do not guess to-day the mood, the pleasure, the power of to-morrow.”

Celebrates the unpredictability and continuing possibility of human experience · Essay, Circles (1841)

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. Walt Whitman · 0.0076 + 0.4771i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  2. W. H. Davies · 0.0206 + 0.4437i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  3. Alexander Brome · −0.0120 + 0.4460i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  4. Arthur O'Shaughnessy · −0.0245 + 0.4904i · 0.042 away · Compare side by side
  5. Thomas Hardy · −0.0321 + 0.4412i · 0.043 away · Compare side by side
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