Poem fractal

Mockery

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

5 November 1850 to 30 October 1919 (~69)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“It cannot be perpetually forgetful and careless of another's wishes and needs, even in the merest trifles.”

Arguing that sustained attentiveness is an essential part of love · Essay, The Important Trifles

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. William Ernest Henley · −0.5977 − 0.0508i · 0.036 away · Compare side by side
  2. T. S. Eliot · −0.5726 − 0.0234i · 0.036 away · Compare side by side
  3. Banjo Paterson · −0.5378 − 0.0862i · 0.038 away · Compare side by side
  4. Alice Corbin · −0.5428 − 0.0259i · 0.038 away · Compare side by side
  5. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. · −0.5881 − 0.0871i · 0.038 away · Compare side by side
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