Poem fractal

Invective Against Swans

by Wallace Stevens

2 October 1879 to 2 August 1955 (~76)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“It is necessary to any originality to have the courage to be an amateur.”

Makes a beginner's nerve the condition of new work · Adagia, notebook aphorisms

More remarks (40)

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 Shirley · −0.2434 − 0.2516i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  2. Anne Brontë · −0.2343 − 0.2385i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  3. Alfred Lord Tennyson · −0.2522 − 0.2501i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  4. A. A. Milne · −0.2293 − 0.2848i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
  5. Nora Hopper Chesson · −0.2476 − 0.2280i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
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