Poem fractal

An Unanswered Question

by Leonard Bacon

26 May 1887 to 1 January 1954 (~67)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Poetry continues to be my blessing and my curse.”

Acknowledging both the gift and the burden of the art · As reported later in life

More remarks (1)

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. Arthur Symons · −0.0230 + 0.0131i · 0.008 away · Compare side by side
  2. Christina Rossetti · −0.0117 + 0.0178i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.0549 − 0.0027i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  4. Lord Byron · −0.0509 + 0.0391i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
  5. Elizabeth Devereux · −0.0525 − 0.0127i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
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