Poem fractal

By the Waters of Babylon

by Edgar Lee Masters

23 August 1868 to 5 March 1950 (~82)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“To overthrow the law to punish a breach of the law is to meet anarchy with anarchy itself.”

Arguing that unlawful remedies merely reproduce the wrong they oppose · Essay, The New Star Chamber, 1904

More remarks (37)

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. Thomas Flatman · −0.2818 − 0.4342i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  2. Lord Byron · −0.2620 − 0.4395i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  3. John Greenleaf Whittier · −0.2637 − 0.4334i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  4. Charles Tennyson Turner · −0.2854 − 0.4573i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  5. Felicia Dorothea Hemans · −0.2645 − 0.4270i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
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