Poem fractal

Revelation

by Robert Frost

26 March 1874 to 29 January 1963 (~89)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.”

Using a sporting image to stress the value of formal constraint in poetry · Conversation / lecture remark, as commonly attributed

More remarks (17)

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. Siegfried Sassoon · 0.2149 − 0.6671i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  2. Robert Frost · 0.2209 − 0.6530i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  3. Charles Webbe · 0.2196 − 0.6928i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  4. Ada Cambridge · 0.1933 − 0.6563i · 0.045 away · Compare side by side
  5. Richard Jago · 0.1946 − 0.6485i · 0.047 away · Compare side by side
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