Poem fractal

Earnestness

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

5 November 1850 to 30 October 1919 (~69)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Had he gained his knowledge in the first instance, he would have escaped the later disaster.”

Suggesting that genuine understanding can prevent repeated mistakes · A Woman of the World

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 Butler Yeats · −0.3907 + 0.6246i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  2. W. H. Davies · −0.3978 + 0.6272i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  3. John Keats · −0.3991 + 0.6441i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  4. Dylan Thomas · −0.3955 + 0.6506i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  5. Ralph Waldo Emerson · −0.3923 + 0.6538i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
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