Poem fractal

The Voiceless

by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

29 August 1809 to 7 October 1894 (~85)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I have forgotten all the philosophy about contentment I intended to bore you with.”

A self-mocking rejection of his own intended sermon on contentment · Letter to Phineas Barnes, May 8, 1830

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. Ernest Dowson · −0.6049 − 0.1051i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  2. Hart Crane · −0.5866 − 0.1123i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  3. Dylan Thomas · −0.5816 − 0.1170i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  4. William Ernest Henley · −0.5977 − 0.0508i · 0.038 away · Compare side by side
  5. Ella Wheeler Wilcox · −0.5630 − 0.0583i · 0.038 away · Compare side by side
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