Poem fractal

Fletcher McGee

by Edgar Lee Masters

23 August 1868 to 5 March 1950 (~82)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“It was you who pressed upon my attention in June, 1909, the Greek Anthology. It was from contemplation of its epitaphs that my hand unconsciously strayed to the sketches of The Spoon River Anthology.”

Acknowledges the Greek Anthology as a crucial inspiration for his most famous work · Letter to William Marion Reedy

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. Nora Hopper Chesson · −0.2308 + 0.6979i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  2. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.2261 + 0.7035i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  3. Gerald Massey · −0.2400 + 0.6979i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  4. J.G. Holland · −0.2202 + 0.6599i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  5. Dylan Thomas · −0.2441 + 0.6687i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
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