Poem fractal

What God is like to him I serve

by Anne Bradstreet

1612 to 16 September 1672 (~60)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Sweet words are like honey, a little may refresh, but too much gluts the stomach.”

Suggesting that pleasant speech is best valued in moderation · Prose meditation (Meditations Divine and Moral)

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. Elizabeth Prentiss · 0.0776 − 0.7246i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  2. Douglas Hyde · 0.1096 − 0.7274i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  3. Emily Dickinson · 0.0715 − 0.7212i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  4. Mathilde Blind · 0.1086 − 0.7017i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  5. Edward Lear · 0.0730 − 0.7412i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
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