Poem fractal

The Ballad of the Oysterman

by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

29 August 1809 to 7 October 1894 (~85)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“So we are trying to keep the name of Holmes respectable on this side of the Atlantic.”

A playful expression of family pride and literary responsibility · Letter to Emra Holmes

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. William Butler Yeats · −0.3034 + 0.9728i · 0.007 away · Compare side by side
  2. Wilfrid Wilson Gibson · −0.3170 + 0.9519i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  3. T. S. Eliot · −0.2751 + 0.9550i · 0.040 away · Compare side by side
  4. James Oppenheim · −0.2736 + 0.9553i · 0.041 away · Compare side by side
  5. Edgar Allan Poe · −0.2665 + 0.9755i · 0.041 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content