Poem fractal

A Cry

by Sara Teasdale

8 August 1884 to 29 January 1933 (~49)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I would rather have written one perfect lyric than a hundred books of prose.”

Expressing her commitment to concentrated lyrical form · Correspondence, 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. Charles Murray · 0.4948 − 0.6858i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  2. Paul Laurence Dunbar · 0.5030 − 0.6431i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  3. James Joyce · 0.4858 − 0.6479i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
  4. Thomas Weelkes · 0.5003 − 0.6382i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
  5. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 0.4783 − 0.6398i · 0.041 away · Compare side by side
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