Poem fractal

Yet in an hour to come, disdainful dust

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

22 February 1892 to 19 October 1950 (~58)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Life isn't one damn thing after another. It's the same damn thing again and again.”

Widely attributed to Millay, but the precise source is not securely established · Commonly attributed remark

More remarks (2)

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. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.3456 + 0.6805i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  2. Thomas Hood · −0.3599 + 0.6673i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  3. John Crowe Ransom · −0.3458 + 0.7173i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
  4. Charles Lamb · −0.3994 + 0.6847i · 0.038 away · Compare side by side
  5. Claude McKay · −0.4000 + 0.6818i · 0.039 away · Compare side by side
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