Poem fractal

Dreams

by Edgar Allan Poe

19 January 1809 to 7 October 1849 (~40)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have perilled life and reputation and reason.”

Explaining the use of stimulants as an escape from memory and loneliness rather than for enjoyment · Letter to Sarah Helen Whitman

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. Robert Browning · −0.1999 + 0.2168i · 0.001 away · Compare side by side
  2. William Cullen Bryant · −0.1999 + 0.2222i · 0.007 away · Compare side by side
  3. James Graham · −0.1919 + 0.2123i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  4. James Clarence Mangan · −0.1905 + 0.2106i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Blake · −0.1851 + 0.2125i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content