Poem fractal

Yet Sing Low

by Edgar Lee Masters

23 August 1868 to 5 March 1950 (~82)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The law and literature were oil and water.”

Captures the conflict he experienced between his legal profession and his literary ambitions · Across Spoon River

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. Humbert Wolfe · −0.1403 + 1.2972i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  2. Mary Lamb · −0.1479 + 1.2958i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edgar Lee Masters · −0.1490 + 1.3190i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
  4. John Keats · −0.1680 + 1.2571i · 0.042 away · Compare side by side
  5. Robert Herrick · −0.1339 + 1.2340i · 0.052 away · Compare side by side
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