Poem fractal

Palace of the Babies

by Wallace Stevens

2 October 1879 to 2 August 1955 (~76)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Poetry is the scholar's art.”

Emphasising the discipline, learning and craft involved in poetry · Adagia, published in Opus Posthumous

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. Percy Bysshe Shelley · −0.5520 − 0.1959i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  2. Arthur Symons · −0.5527 − 0.1755i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  3. Robert Herrick · −0.5645 − 0.1907i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  4. Alan Seeger · −0.5068 − 0.1892i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
  5. Richard · −0.5037 − 0.1987i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
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