Poem fractal

A Butterfly in Church

by George Marion McClellan

29 September 1860 to 17 May 1934 (~74)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“He has shown how the immortal life of all beautiful things can be handed down for all time in dialect.”

His acknowledgement of the lasting artistic value that dialect can carry, despite his reservations about Negro dialect. · Essay, The Negro as a Writer

More remarks (9)

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. Hart Crane · 0.0027 + 0.0286i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  2. Christina Rossetti · −0.0117 + 0.0178i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  3. John Donne · 0.0018 − 0.0079i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  4. Arthur Symons · −0.0230 + 0.0131i · 0.041 away · Compare side by side
  5. Lady Jane Wilde · 0.0589 + 0.0118i · 0.042 away · Compare side by side
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