Poem fractal

Desolation

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

5 November 1850 to 30 October 1919 (~69)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“It makes no difference how lowly your sphere in life may be, and no matter how limited your environment, you can build your character if you will.”

Arguing that character is available to everyone regardless of circumstances · Essay, The Heart of the New Thought

More remarks (277)

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. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.3171 − 0.1122i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  2. Dylan Thomas · −0.2986 − 0.1265i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  3. A. Mary F. Robinson · −0.3041 − 0.0972i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  4. William Butler Yeats · −0.2884 − 0.1260i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  5. Letitia Elizabeth Landon · −0.3326 − 0.1089i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
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