Poem fractal

The Treadmill Song

by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

29 August 1809 to 7 October 1894 (~85)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I hope you can accept your great sorrow as yet to be interpreted by the Divine wisdom and goodness.”

Offering faith as a possible framework for enduring inexplicable grief · Letter on religious teachings and bereavement

More remarks (213)

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. Nora Hopper Chesson · −0.2197 − 0.4636i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  2. William Wordsworth · −0.2300 − 0.4597i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  3. Richard · −0.2265 − 0.4387i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  4. Nora Hopper Chesson · −0.2403 − 0.4493i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  5. Emily Dickinson · −0.1947 − 0.4533i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
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