Poem fractal

The Heart of a Woman

by Georgia Douglas Johnson

10 September 1880 to 15 May 1966 (~86)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Long years ago when the world was new for me, I dreamed of being a composer—wrote songs, many of them.”

Recalls an early vocation in music before poetry claimed her · Autobiographical note, Opportunity, July 1927

More remarks (18)

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. Carl Sandburg · −0.5130 + 0.2666i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  2. Arthur O'Shaughnessy · −0.5411 + 0.2347i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  3. Emily Dickinson · −0.4997 + 0.2599i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  4. Ada Cambridge · −0.5303 + 0.2162i · 0.036 away · Compare side by side
  5. Gordon Bottomley · −0.4945 + 0.2693i · 0.037 away · Compare side by side
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