Poem fractal

Whereas at morning in a jeweled crown

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

22 February 1892 to 19 October 1950 (~58)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The poet is not a man who says what he thinks, but a man who says what he feels.”

Emphasising emotional truth as central to poetic expression · Essay

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. William Wordsworth · −0.6532 + 0.6965i · 0.007 away · Compare side by side
  2. Mary Coleridge · −0.6596 + 0.6763i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  3. Alfred Austin · −0.6139 + 0.7007i · 0.044 away · Compare side by side
  4. Charles Tennyson Turner · −0.6249 + 0.7335i · 0.046 away · Compare side by side
  5. Witter Bynner · −0.6142 + 0.7209i · 0.048 away · Compare side by side
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