Poem fractal

Song of the Stars

by William Cullen Bryant

3 November 1794 to 12 June 1878 (~84)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The most beautiful poetry is that which takes the strongest hold of the feelings, and, if it is really the most beautiful, then it is poetry in the highest sense.”

Making emotional power central to poetic beauty · Lecture, On the Nature of Poetry, 1825–26

More remarks (20)

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. G. K. Chesterton · −0.2068 + 0.1702i · 0.010 away · Compare side by side
  2. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.2062 + 0.1541i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  3. John Donne · −0.1986 + 0.1512i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  4. Siegfried Sassoon · −0.2075 + 0.1493i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  5. D. H. Lawrence · −0.1870 + 0.1850i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
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