Poem fractal

The Ponies

by William Rose Benét

2 February 1886 to 4 May 1950 (~64)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“As I turn these poems over—if they are even to be called poems—I realize that they can never begin to express what her personality was.”

Poetry admitted as incomplete against a living character · Foreword, Perpetual Light

More remarks (10)

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 · −0.3267 − 0.1464i · 0.006 away · Compare side by side
  2. A. Mary F. Robinson · −0.3209 − 0.1588i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  3. Arthur Hugh Clough · −0.3384 − 0.1345i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  4. Matthew Arnold · −0.3354 − 0.1208i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
  5. Philip Bourke Marston · −0.3609 − 0.1425i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
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