Poem fractal

Andaluza

by Grace Hazard Conkling

7 February 1878 to 15 November 1958 (~80)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“If we once realize how children see things we can never patronize them again.”

On the unique perception of childhood that adults overlook · Talk, Imagination and Children's Reading (Hampshire Bookshop, 1920)

More remarks (4)

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 · −0.3380 − 0.4778i · 0.005 away · Compare side by side
  2. John Clare · −0.3384 − 0.4968i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  3. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.3525 − 0.4749i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  4. Maria White Lowell · −0.3382 − 0.4663i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  5. Sara Teasdale · −0.3563 − 0.4892i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
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