Poem fractal

The Lights of New York

by Sara Teasdale

8 August 1884 to 29 January 1933 (~49)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“It may be present for some time before the poet is conscious of what is tormenting him.”

Recognising that the impulse towards poetry may precede conscious understanding · Statement on poetic craft, in Marguerite Wilkinson, New Voices, 1919

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. Hartley Coleridge · −0.7351 + 0.6324i · 0.058 away · Compare side by side
  2. Thomas Hood · −0.6985 + 0.7338i · 0.061 away · Compare side by side
  3. Charlotte Smith · −0.6914 + 0.7503i · 0.078 away · Compare side by side
  4. Mary Coleridge · −0.6596 + 0.6763i · 0.082 away · Compare side by side
  5. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.6577 + 0.7016i · 0.084 away · Compare side by side
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