Poem fractal

Two Young for Love

by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

29 August 1809 to 7 October 1894 (~85)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Life is never monotonous, absolutely.”

A compact reflection on the inexhaustible variety hidden beneath an apparently uneventful life · Letter to James Russell Lowell

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. Manuel Machado · 1.1762 − 0.6126i · 0.090 away · Compare side by side
  2. Gabriele D'Annunzio · 1.0343 − 0.5559i · 0.099 away · Compare side by side
  3. Manuel Machado · 1.0262 − 0.5563i · 0.107 away · Compare side by side
  4. D. H. Lawrence · 1.1529 − 0.3948i · 0.141 away · Compare side by side
  5. Antonio Machado · 0.9548 − 0.4924i · 0.181 away · Compare side by side
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