Poem fractal

Flowers

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

27 February 1807 to 24 March 1882 (~75)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Music is the universal language of mankind.”

Presenting music as a shared form of human expression beyond national boundaries · Prose travel writing

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. Ralph Waldo Emerson · −0.3537 − 0.1986i · 0.001 away · Compare side by side
  2. Madison Julius Cawein · −0.3625 − 0.1932i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  3. A. A. Milne · −0.3703 − 0.2045i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  4. Hart Crane · −0.3593 − 0.1762i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  5. Dylan Thomas · −0.3321 − 0.2165i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
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