Poem fractal

Poverty

by Henry David Thoreau

12 July 1817 to 6 May 1862 (~45)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”

Linking meaningful writing with direct, lived experience · Walden

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. Violet Fane · −0.0987 − 0.2672i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  2. Thomas Hardy · −0.0865 − 0.2732i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
  3. Arthur Symons · −0.0642 − 0.2371i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
  4. Stephen Vincent Benét · −0.1118 − 0.2765i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
  5. Robert Burns · −0.0764 − 0.2180i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
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