Poem fractal

Jacob Braham

by Edgar Lee Masters

23 August 1868 to 5 March 1950 (~82)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Poems in my Spoon River books about faithful and loving hearts, about kind and generous and hopeful people.”

Highlights the compassionate and hopeful dimension of his work often overshadowed by its darker reputation · Letter to August Derleth, 1939

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. Richard · −0.1830 + 0.6987i · 0.008 away · Compare side by side
  2. Robert Stephen Hawker · −0.1563 + 0.7005i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  3. Amy Levy · −0.1937 + 0.6799i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  4. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.1411 + 0.6906i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
  5. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.1478 + 0.6730i · 0.036 away · Compare side by side
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