Poem fractal

We Wear the Mask

by Paul Laurence Dunbar

27 June 1872 to 9 February 1906 (~34)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I've got to write dialect poetry; it's the only way I can get them to listen to me.”

Acknowledging the practical necessity of dialect for reaching an audience · Conversation with James Weldon Johnson

More remarks (10)

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. Edgar A. Guest · 0.0209 − 0.4236i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  2. Dylan Thomas · 0.0439 − 0.4563i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  3. Violet Jacob · 0.0560 − 0.4223i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  4. Amelia Alderson Opie · 0.0585 − 0.4236i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  5. Amy Lowell · 0.0144 − 0.4466i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
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