Poem fractal

The Death of a Soldier

by Wallace Stevens

2 October 1879 to 2 August 1955 (~76)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Sentimentality is a failure of feeling.”

Distinguishes easy emotion from feeling that has held · 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. Amastan Ag Mohamed · −0.0138 − 0.7511i · 0.006 away · Compare side by side
  2. Richard Lovelace · −0.0086 − 0.7428i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  3. Rose Hartwick Thorpe · −0.0013 − 0.7451i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  4. Ford Madox Hueffer · −0.0134 − 0.7824i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  5. Thomas Hood · −0.0405 − 0.7550i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
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