Poem fractal

The Hill

by Edgar Lee Masters

23 August 1868 to 5 March 1950 (~82)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The end of democracy is the development of the individual in intellect and morals and usefulness, in a sense of justice, in the virtues of the heart.”

Presenting democracy as a means of cultivating capable and humane individuals · Essay, Observations on Democracy, 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. Philip Bourke Marston · −0.2209 + 0.1744i · 0.002 away · Compare side by side
  2. Samuel Taylor Coleridge · −0.2309 + 0.1734i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  3. G. K. Chesterton · −0.2068 + 0.1702i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  4. John Donne · −0.2324 + 0.1908i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Cullen Bryant · −0.1980 + 0.1663i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
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