Poem fractal

Old Ironsides

by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

29 August 1809 to 7 October 1894 (~85)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Nothing is easier than to make disadvantageous comparisons between ourselves and our neighbors.”

A useful warning against measuring one's life unfairly against other people · Letter to Phineas Barnes

More remarks (213)

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. Ebenezer Jones · −0.3591 − 0.4232i · 0.007 away · Compare side by side
  2. Bliss Carman · −0.3493 − 0.4193i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  3. Christina Rossetti · −0.3811 − 0.4220i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  4. John Crowe Ransom · −0.3435 − 0.4161i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  5. Arthur O'Shaughnessy · −0.3767 − 0.4331i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content