Poem fractal

Aunt Tabitha

by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

29 August 1809 to 7 October 1894 (~85)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“It is not until seeing Rome that one gets the perfect idea of having seen the very noblest objects of art.”

Describing direct encounter with great art as transformative · Letter from Europe

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. Thomas Moore · 0.1870 + 0.1268i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  2. William Shakespeare · 0.1925 + 0.1539i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edward James Mortimer Collins · 0.1804 + 0.1061i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  4. John Donne · 0.1901 + 0.1616i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
  5. Louis Untermeyer · 0.1962 + 0.1089i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
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