Poem fractal

Vos Non Vobis

by Edith M. Thomas

12 August 1854 to 13 September 1925 (~71)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“My birthdays are the most melancholy days I know.”

Reflecting her youthful tendency to greet the passage of time with introspection rather than celebration · Letter to an Oberlin friend, 1874

More remarks (5)

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. Edgar Lee Masters · −0.2648 + 0.1027i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  2. Ella Wheeler Wilcox · −0.2654 + 0.0956i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  3. Phillis Wheatley · −0.2699 + 0.1022i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  4. Thomas Hood · −0.2813 + 0.1032i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  5. Louis MacNeice · −0.2524 + 0.0763i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
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