Poem fractal

Identity

by Mark Van Doren

13 June 1894 to 10 December 1972 (~78)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.”

Presenting teaching as guidance that enables curiosity and independent understanding · Essay / educational writing

More remarks (3)

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. Dylan Thomas · −0.2222 + 0.9190i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  2. Banjo Paterson · −0.1797 + 0.9382i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
  3. Walt Whitman · −0.2236 + 0.9582i · 0.040 away · Compare side by side
  4. Richard Lovelace · −0.2528 + 0.9259i · 0.046 away · Compare side by side
  5. Nora Hopper Chesson · −0.2020 + 0.8513i · 0.071 away · Compare side by side
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