Poem fractal

The Metropolitan Tower

by Sara Teasdale

8 August 1884 to 29 January 1933 (~49)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I have been guided from first to last by their enjoyment or their boredom.”

Putting a child's genuine response ahead of adult literary prescription · Prefatory Note, Rainbow Gold, 1922

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 · −0.4538 − 0.6367i · 0.008 away · Compare side by side
  2. Thomas Chatterton · −0.4580 − 0.6517i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  3. Charlotte Richardson · −0.4540 − 0.6537i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  4. Patrick Reginald Chalmers · −0.4265 − 0.6496i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  5. George Darley · −0.4291 − 0.6525i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
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