Poem fractal

A Maiden

by Sara Teasdale

8 August 1884 to 29 January 1933 (~49)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“A poem is not an explanation; it is an experience.”

Emphasising felt encounter over intellectual paraphrase · Prose statement, commonly attributed

More remarks (47)

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 Dickinson · −0.1832 − 0.9536i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  2. Francis Hastings Doyle · −0.2008 − 0.9089i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  3. A. A. Milne · −0.2202 − 0.9152i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
  4. Emily Dickinson · −0.1989 − 0.9047i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Blake · −0.2067 − 0.9677i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content