Poem fractal

I Broke the Spell

by William Cullen Bryant

3 November 1794 to 12 June 1878 (~84)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The right to discuss freely and openly, by speech, by the pen, by the press, all political questions, and to examine and animadvert upon all political institutions, is a right so clear and certain, so interwoven with our other liberties, so necessary, in fact to their existence, that without it we must fall at once into depression or anarchy.”

Defending free discussion as essential to liberty after the murder of an abolitionist editor · Editorial on the death of Elijah Parish Lovejoy, 18 November 1837

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. Dylan Thomas · −0.1958 − 0.4323i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  2. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.1805 − 0.4429i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  3. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.1581 − 0.4211i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  4. Walter Savage Landor · −0.2138 − 0.4171i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  5. Emily Dickinson · −0.1947 − 0.4533i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
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