Poem fractal

Heart, have no pity on this house of bone

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. Elizabeth Barrett Browning · 0.3239 + 0.7284i · 0.036 away · Compare side by side
  2. William Dunbar · 0.2945 + 0.6921i · 0.048 away · Compare side by side
  3. William Wordsworth · 0.2946 + 0.6783i · 0.061 away · Compare side by side
  4. Sir Samuel Ferguson · 0.2441 + 0.6967i · 0.062 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Butler Yeats · 0.3685 + 0.7201i · 0.081 away · Compare side by side
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