Poem fractal

The Valley of Unrest

by Edgar Allan Poe

19 January 1809 to 7 October 1849 (~40)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I shall be a littérateur, at least, all my life; nor would I abandon the hopes which still lead me on for all the gold in California.”

Rejecting material temptation in favour of a lifelong literary vocation · Letter to Frederick W. Thomas, 14 February 1849

More remarks (39)

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. James Oppenheim · −0.2736 + 0.9553i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  2. T. S. Eliot · −0.2751 + 0.9550i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  3. William Butler Yeats · −0.3034 + 0.9728i · 0.037 away · Compare side by side
  4. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. · −0.3077 + 0.9783i · 0.041 away · Compare side by side
  5. Walt Whitman · −0.2236 + 0.9582i · 0.046 away · Compare side by side
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