Poem fractal

George Gray

by Edgar Lee Masters

23 August 1868 to 5 March 1950 (~82)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“If this book shall prove in any manner to be a contribution to the literature of liberty, I shall feel that the time and the labor of its composition were not wasted.”

Defining literary work as worthwhile when it advances human freedom · Preface to The New Star Chamber and Other Essays, 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. William Drummond · 0.1392 + 0.8606i · 0.007 away · Compare side by side
  2. Edgar Lee Masters · 0.1335 + 0.8418i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  3. Nora Hopper Chesson · 0.1821 + 0.8724i · 0.049 away · Compare side by side
  4. Charles Harding Firth · 0.1854 + 0.8647i · 0.052 away · Compare side by side
  5. Richard · 0.1242 + 0.8111i · 0.054 away · Compare side by side
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