Poem fractal

Immortal

by Sara Teasdale

8 August 1884 to 29 January 1933 (~49)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Though the passion called love has not changed appreciably during recorded time, our ideas about it have changed constantly, and sometimes with great rapidity.”

Distinguishing the enduring emotion of love from changing social ideas about it · Preface to revised edition, The Answering Voice, 1928

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. Sir Henry Taylor · −0.3924 − 0.4385i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  2. Christina Rossetti · −0.3811 − 0.4220i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  3. Arthur O'Shaughnessy · −0.3767 − 0.4331i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  4. Amelia Alderson Opie · −0.3761 − 0.4393i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  5. John Dowland · −0.4128 − 0.4432i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
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