Poem fractal

A Mood

by Philip Bourke Marston

13 August 1850 to 13 February 1887 (~37)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“There can be no doubt that, measuring by quality, not quantity, your place is in the very foremost rank of poets.”

Insisting that literary achievement should be judged by quality rather than abundance · Letter to Louise Chandler Moulton, quoted in Representative Women of New England

More remarks (9)

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. Nicholas Breton · −0.0493 + 0.7493i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  2. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.0418 + 0.7511i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  3. Thomas Hood · −0.0320 + 0.7567i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  4. Thomas Hood · −0.0489 + 0.7130i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
  5. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt · −0.0217 + 0.7185i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
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