Poem fractal

Commencement

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. Sir Philip Sidney · −0.2158 − 0.3692i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  2. Ralph Waldo Emerson · −0.2219 − 0.3734i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  3. Banjo Paterson · −0.2290 − 0.3648i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  4. Robert Nichols · −0.2166 − 0.3505i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  5. Paul Laurence Dunbar · −0.2060 − 0.3484i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content