Poem fractal

Longing

by Paul Laurence Dunbar

27 June 1872 to 9 February 1906 (~34)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I have never been able to determine whether I am a poet who writes prose or a prose writer who writes poetry.”

Capturing his fluid movement between poetic and prose forms · Conversation, as commonly attributed

More remarks (10)

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. Thomas Chatterton · −0.1266 + 0.4078i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  2. Sir Edward Dyer · −0.1320 + 0.4126i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  3. Lord Byron · −0.1244 + 0.4283i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  4. A. A. Milne · −0.1227 + 0.3824i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
  5. Gerard Manley Hopkins · −0.1464 + 0.4046i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
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