Poem fractal

Plea of the Negro Soldier

by Charles Frederick White

1876 to 1955 (~79)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“If you had been deprived of an education in your early youth; if then you had run away from home to obtain that education”

Recalling his determined pursuit of education despite poverty and disadvantage · Foreword to Plea of the Negro Soldier and a Hundred Other Poems, 1908

More remarks (8)

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. Emily Brontë · −0.2943 − 0.5929i · 0.007 away · Compare side by side
  2. Richard · −0.2806 − 0.6108i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  3. Alexander Montgomerie · −0.2872 − 0.5677i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  4. Emily Dickinson · −0.2824 − 0.6125i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  5. Edgar Allan Poe · −0.2611 − 0.5963i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
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