Poem fractal

Alone

by Sara Teasdale

8 August 1884 to 29 January 1933 (~49)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Every word, every syllable, must be an unobtrusive and yet an indispensable part of his creation.”

Insisting that poetic economy makes every element necessary · Statement on poetic craft, in Marguerite Wilkinson, New Voices, 1919

More remarks (47)

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. Amelia Alderson Opie · 0.3533 − 0.6102i · 0.038 away · Compare side by side
  2. Tobias Hume · 0.2876 − 0.6437i · 0.038 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edgar Allan Poe · 0.3384 − 0.5817i · 0.043 away · Compare side by side
  4. Katharine Lee Bates · 0.2780 − 0.6451i · 0.047 away · Compare side by side
  5. Emily Dickinson · 0.3692 − 0.6155i · 0.053 away · Compare side by side
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