Poem fractal

Kildeer

by Edgar Lee Masters

23 August 1868 to 5 March 1950 (~82)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The passion of my life to which philosophy and science and history have been but handmaidens.”

Describes poetry as the central intellectual and imaginative passion of his life · 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. Edgar Allan Poe · −0.6596 + 0.5798i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  2. Dylan Thomas · −0.6322 + 0.6286i · 0.050 away · Compare side by side
  3. Wilfrid Wilson Gibson · −0.6992 + 0.5483i · 0.064 away · Compare side by side
  4. John Keats · −0.5796 + 0.5943i · 0.066 away · Compare side by side
  5. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.5897 + 0.5365i · 0.069 away · Compare side by side
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