Poem fractal

The Plan

by Benjamin Griffith Brawley

22 April 1882 to 1 February 1939 (~57)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Literature should be not only history but prophecy, not only the record of our striving but also the mirror of our hopes and dreams. The Negro himself is the supreme challenge to American literature.”

Calling for literature that both records and envisions the future · Essay (as reprinted 1923)

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. Frances E. W. Harper · −0.0984 − 0.7985i · 0.008 away · Compare side by side
  2. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.1039 − 0.7920i · 0.010 away · Compare side by side
  3. Emily Dickinson · −0.1002 − 0.7871i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  4. A. A. Milne · −0.0968 − 0.7836i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  5. Cale Young Rice · −0.0806 − 0.8035i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
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