Poem fractal

I Shall Never See You Again

by Edgar Lee Masters

23 August 1868 to 5 March 1950 (~82)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The way to get Whitman's beauty is to consider his comprehension, the multiverse that he sees, the love for nature that stirs him with such mystical simplicity of heart.”

Praises Whitman's expansive vision, simplicity and profound relationship with nature · Essay on Walt Whitman

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 Shakespeare · 0.3409 − 0.0319i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  2. J.M. Synge · 0.3578 − 0.0180i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  3. George Sterling · 0.3105 − 0.0338i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  4. J.G. Holland · 0.3391 + 0.0053i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  5. Walter Savage Landor · 0.3040 − 0.0203i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
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