Poem fractal

Passers-By

by Carl Sandburg

6 January 1878 to 22 July 1967 (~89)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Poetry is an echo asking a shadow to dance.”

Presenting poetry as an evocative exchange between sound, image and imagination · Essay or prose remark, source often cited without precise reference

More remarks (4)

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. Richard Lovelace · −0.0086 − 0.7428i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  2. Rose Hartwick Thorpe · −0.0013 − 0.7451i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  3. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · 0.0032 − 0.7119i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  4. Letitia Elizabeth Landon · 0.0059 − 0.7120i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  5. Anna Lætitia Barbauld · 0.0178 − 0.7284i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
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