Poem fractal

The Two Glasses

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

5 November 1850 to 30 October 1919 (~69)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The sooner we teach little children what a mighty truth lies in the Bible phrase As a man thinketh, so is he, the better for future generations.”

Emphasising the formative power of ideas in childhood education · Essay, Thought Force

More remarks (277)

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. Charlotte Smith · −0.1083 + 0.5734i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  2. Rudyard Kipling · −0.0985 + 0.5931i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  3. Amy Lowell · −0.0991 + 0.6096i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
  4. William Wordsworth · −0.1114 + 0.5648i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
  5. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.1573 + 0.6117i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
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