Poem fractal

The Teacher

by Leslie Pinckney Hill

14 May 1880 to 15 February 1960 (~80)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“What he craves above all else is that he shall be calm and right and faithful in his place.”

Worth measured by fidelity rather than outward victory · Essay, The Future of Our Culture, Journal of Negro Education

More remarks (14)

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. John Keats · −0.3031 − 0.6974i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  2. Clement Clarke Moore · −0.3294 − 0.6968i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  3. T. S. Eliot · −0.3298 − 0.6841i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  4. J.G. Holland · −0.3002 − 0.6966i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  5. Emily Dickinson · −0.3248 − 0.7064i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
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