Poem fractal

Imitation

by Edgar Allan Poe

19 January 1809 to 7 October 1849 (~40)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“It is in Music, perhaps, that the soul most nearly attains the great end for which, when inspired by the Poetic Sentiment, it struggles — the creation of supernal Beauty.”

Presenting music as the soul’s closest approach to transcendent beauty · Essay on poetics, published 1850

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 Elroy Flecker · −0.2943 + 0.1499i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  2. William Johnson Cory · −0.3222 + 0.1737i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edgar A. Guest · −0.3309 + 0.1681i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  4. Arthur Symons · −0.2874 + 0.1605i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  5. Robert Herrick · −0.2898 + 0.1406i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
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