Poem fractal

The Innovator

by Stephen Vincent Benét

22 July 1898 to 13 March 1943 (~45)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Let each one of us say, 'I am an American. I intend to stay an American. I will do my best to wipe from my heart hate, rancor and political prejudice. I will sustain my government. And, through good days or bad, I will try to serve my country.”

An appeal for civic unity and service above partisanship · Public address / wartime remarks

More remarks (2)

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. Lord Byron · −0.1032 − 0.5227i · 0.006 away · Compare side by side
  2. William Blake · −0.0973 − 0.5143i · 0.010 away · Compare side by side
  3. Alexander Pope · −0.1126 − 0.5302i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  4. Richard · −0.0937 − 0.5078i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  5. Sir Lewis Morris · −0.1048 − 0.4971i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
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