Poem fractal

See It Through

by Edgar A. Guest

20 August 1881 to 5 August 1959 (~78)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“We were not to be one hundred per cent happy. No one ever is.”

Acknowledging that sorrow remains an unavoidable part of even a fortunate life · Prose memoir, Making the House a Home, 1922

More remarks (25)

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. Anthony Munday · 0.8664 − 0.3892i · 0.051 away · Compare side by side
  2. Nora Hopper Chesson · 0.7966 − 0.3381i · 0.054 away · Compare side by side
  3. Catherine Pozzi · 0.8162 − 0.3268i · 0.063 away · Compare side by side
  4. Robert Burns · 0.8779 − 0.4022i · 0.064 away · Compare side by side
  5. Francesco Petrarca · 0.8778 − 0.3666i · 0.067 away · Compare side by side
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