Poem fractal

The Little Builders

by Frances E. W. Harper

24 September 1825 to 22 February 1911 (~86)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“O women of America! into your hands God has pressed one of the sublimest opportunities that ever came into the hands of the women of any race or people.”

She frames civic participation as a profound opportunity for women to serve society. · Speech, Woman's Political Future, 1893

More remarks (41)

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. Anonymous · −0.0431 − 0.6445i · 0.003 away · Compare side by side
  2. Mary Coleridge · −0.0298 − 0.6576i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  3. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.0381 − 0.6629i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  4. Phoebe Cary · −0.0588 − 0.6559i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  5. Ben King · −0.0645 − 0.6474i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
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