Poem fractal

Trainor, the Druggist

by Edgar Lee Masters

23 August 1868 to 5 March 1950 (~82)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The people there were hospitable, warm-hearted and generous beyond any people I have known, and full of the will to live.”

Expresses deep affection for the people and culture of the Illinois countryside of his youth · The Sangamon

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 · −0.4897 + 0.3345i · 0.002 away · Compare side by side
  2. Philip Bourke Marston · −0.4783 + 0.3170i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  3. Gerard Manley Hopkins · −0.4972 + 0.3595i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  4. George Kirbye · −0.5194 + 0.3155i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
  5. Barry Cornwall · −0.5063 + 0.2972i · 0.039 away · Compare side by side
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