Poem fractal

The Sorry Hostess

by Edgar A. Guest

20 August 1881 to 5 August 1959 (~78)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“But a home cannot be builded always on happiness.”

Acknowledging that shared sorrow also deepens belonging · Autobiographical essay, 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. D. H. Lawrence · −0.4704 + 0.1847i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  2. Matthew Arnold · −0.4583 + 0.1430i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  3. Dylan Thomas · −0.5138 + 0.1676i · 0.042 away · Compare side by side
  4. Dylan Thomas · −0.4785 + 0.1217i · 0.042 away · Compare side by side
  5. Edwin Arlington Robinson · −0.4247 + 0.1689i · 0.048 away · Compare side by side
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