Poem fractal

Man, the Creator!

by James Oppenheim

24 May 1882 to 4 August 1932 (~50)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet.”

A concise contrast between imagined future happiness and the practice of cultivating it in the present · Prose remark, commonly attributed to James Oppenheim

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. John Donne · 0.1027 − 0.0929i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  2. William Blake · 0.0800 − 0.0949i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  3. Thomas Hoccleve · 0.1101 − 0.0913i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  4. Dylan Thomas · 0.1136 − 0.1387i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
  5. Genevieve Taggard · 0.0760 − 0.0710i · 0.043 away · Compare side by side
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