Poem fractal

The Dawn's Awake!

by Otto Leland Bohanan

c. 1895 to 6 December 1932 (~37)

Browse poets 678

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. Robert Herrick · −0.6049 − 0.4912i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  2. Amelia Alderson Opie · −0.6164 − 0.5266i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  3. Nora Hopper Chesson · −0.6119 − 0.5358i · 0.036 away · Compare side by side
  4. Bliss Carman · −0.6272 − 0.4723i · 0.039 away · Compare side by side
  5. Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton · −0.5800 − 0.4668i · 0.041 away · Compare side by side
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