Poem fractal

Soon as the glazed and gleaming snow

by William Cullen Bryant

3 November 1794 to 12 June 1878 (~84)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Remember that it does not concern itself with abstract reasonings, nor with any course of investigation that fatigues the mind.”

On the limits of abstraction in poetry · Lectures on Poetry

More remarks (68)

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. James Russell Lowell · −0.4933 − 0.5910i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  2. William Edmondstoune Aytoun · −0.4908 − 0.5726i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  3. Mina Loy · −0.5071 − 0.5672i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  4. Christopher Marlowe · −0.5001 − 0.5569i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  5. Arthur Symons · −0.4831 − 0.6067i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
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