Poem fractal

Conjured

by Robert Nathaniel Dett

11 October 1882 to 2 October 1943 (~61)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“There was poured into the astonished and delighted ears of the world an indigenous music, sung by its own creators, a music as fresh as the morning, as intimate as the breath and as vital as the heartbeat.”

Celebrating the vitality and authenticity of the spiritual as a distinctive cultural contribution · On African American spirituals

More remarks (5)

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. Adelaide Crapsey · −0.4041 − 1.2079i · 0.040 away · Compare side by side
  2. Bliss Carman · −0.4961 − 1.2191i · 0.053 away · Compare side by side
  3. Mina Loy · −0.3707 − 1.2058i · 0.074 away · Compare side by side
  4. Emily Dickinson · −0.3741 − 1.1559i · 0.087 away · Compare side by side
  5. Joseph Seamon Cotter Jr. · −0.5275 − 1.2435i · 0.090 away · Compare side by side
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