Poem fractal

Old Rhythm and Rhyme

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

5 November 1850 to 30 October 1919 (~69)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Surely he who best uses an idea is most entitled to the credit.”

Defending creative reworking rather than demanding absolute novelty · A Woman of the World

More remarks (277)

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. Emily Brontë · −0.3468 + 0.4278i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  2. William Lisle Bowles · −0.3333 + 0.4282i · 0.037 away · Compare side by side
  3. Christina Rossetti · −0.3907 + 0.4260i · 0.037 away · Compare side by side
  4. David Melvill · −0.3245 + 0.4212i · 0.040 away · Compare side by side
  5. Maxwell Bodenheim · −0.3625 + 0.4439i · 0.040 away · Compare side by side
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