Poem fractal

Had Youth Been Willing to Listen

by Edgar A. Guest

20 August 1881 to 5 August 1959 (~78)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“To be partners in a sacred memory is a divine bond.”

Describing how remembrance of loss can unite people permanently · 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. William Johnson Cory · −0.3222 + 0.1737i · 0.010 away · Compare side by side
  2. John Ward · −0.3532 + 0.1743i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edgar Allan Poe · −0.3114 + 0.1545i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  4. Christina Rossetti · −0.3049 + 0.1924i · 0.036 away · Compare side by side
  5. Mina Loy · −0.3132 + 0.1994i · 0.036 away · Compare side by side
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