Poem fractal

In Desperate Hope

by Rabindranath Tagore

7 May 1861 to 7 August 1941 (~80)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The butterfly counts not in months but moments, and has time enough.”

Celebrating the intensity of the present moment rather than the length of life · Prose aphorism, Stray Birds

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. Arthur O'Shaughnessy · 0.2227 − 0.2591i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  2. Richard · 0.2092 − 0.2283i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  3. Robert Herrick · 0.2074 − 0.2117i · 0.038 away · Compare side by side
  4. Richard · 0.2406 − 0.2901i · 0.047 away · Compare side by side
  5. Nora Hopper Chesson · 0.2818 − 0.2555i · 0.060 away · Compare side by side
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