Poem fractal

Mammy's Cracklin' Bread

by Theodore Henry Shackelford

29 May 1887 to 5 February 1923 (~36)

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. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. · −0.0040 − 0.4712i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  2. Amy Lowell · 0.0144 − 0.4466i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  3. E. Nesbit · 0.0021 − 0.4898i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  4. William Bell Scott · 0.0413 − 0.4664i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
  5. Phoebe Cary · −0.0195 − 0.4715i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content