Poem fractal

Merry Autumn

by Paul Laurence Dunbar

27 June 1872 to 9 February 1906 (~34)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“My natural speech is dialect.”

Claiming dialect as authentic to his voice rather than pure artifice · As commonly reported

More remarks (10)

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 · −0.4733 − 0.6819i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  2. Robert Williams Buchanan · −0.4688 − 0.6702i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  3. Francis Ledwidge · −0.4817 − 0.6540i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  4. Fiona Macleod · −0.5030 − 0.6821i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  5. Robert Stephen Hawker · −0.4968 − 0.6896i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content