Poem fractal

Fire and Ice

by Robert Frost

26 March 1874 to 29 January 1963 (~89)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.”

Describing poetry as a movement from spontaneous pleasure towards fuller understanding · Essay, The Figure a Poem Makes

More remarks (17)

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. William Butler Yeats · 0.2800 − 0.4451i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  2. Amelia Alderson Opie · 0.2396 − 0.4684i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edwin Arlington Robinson · 0.2362 − 0.4534i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  4. Owen Seaman · 0.2391 − 0.4793i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
  5. Joy
    Carl Sandburg · 0.2327 − 0.4532i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
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