Poem fractal

Always Saying "Don't!"

by Edgar A. Guest

20 August 1881 to 5 August 1959 (~78)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Fortunately for all of us, life does not break its sad news in advance.”

Observing that ignorance of future sorrow allows present happiness to survive · 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. Edgar Allan Poe · 0.2240 − 0.4743i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  2. Owen Seaman · 0.2391 − 0.4793i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  3. Leigh Hunt · 0.1955 − 0.4693i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  4. George Marion McClellan · 0.2225 − 0.5240i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
  5. Amelia Alderson Opie · 0.2396 − 0.4684i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
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