Poem fractal

If I Had Known

by Alice Dunbar Nelson

19 July 1875 to 18 September 1935 (~60)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The race is here faced with a startling fact. Our birth rate is declining; our infant mortality is increasing.”

Addressing demographic concerns within the African American community · Essay, 'Woman's Most Serious Problem'

More remarks (15)

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. Nora Hopper Chesson · −0.3417 + 0.1215i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  2. Richard · −0.3227 + 0.0768i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
  3. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.3054 + 0.1234i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
  4. Richard · −0.3181 + 0.0777i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
  5. Patrick Reginald Chalmers · −0.3751 + 0.1000i · 0.040 away · Compare side by side
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