Poem fractal

Amid the Roses

by Alice Dunbar Nelson

19 July 1875 to 18 September 1935 (~60)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Blue. My God! I'm so blue that if I were a dog, I'd sit on my haunches and howl and howl and howl.”

A vivid, almost comic, expression of overwhelming sadness · Diary or letter (commonly attributed)

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. John Donne · −0.4442 + 0.2861i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  2. Samuel Taylor Coleridge · −0.4594 + 0.2961i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
  3. Dylan Thomas · −0.4178 + 0.3282i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
  4. Charles Sorley · −0.4112 + 0.2638i · 0.037 away · Compare side by side
  5. Philip Bourke Marston · −0.4783 + 0.3170i · 0.055 away · Compare side by side
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