Poem fractal

Albert Thurston

by Edgar Lee Masters

23 August 1868 to 5 March 1950 (~82)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The people there were hospitable, warm-hearted and generous beyond any people I have known, and full of the will to live.”

Expresses deep affection for the people and culture of the Illinois countryside of his youth · The Sangamon

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. Phillis Wheatley · −0.2699 + 0.1022i · 0.005 away · Compare side by side
  2. Ella Wheeler Wilcox · −0.2654 + 0.0956i · 0.007 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edith M. Thomas · −0.2540 + 0.1066i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  4. Thomas Hood · −0.2813 + 0.1032i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  5. Anna Lætitia Barbauld · −0.2804 + 0.0883i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
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