Poem fractal

Sun Song

by Langston Hughes

1 February 1902 to 22 May 1967 (~65)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“No great poet has ever been afraid of being himself.”

Linking artistic greatness with the courage to be oneself · Essay, The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain

More remarks (92)

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. J. C. Squire · −0.5483 − 0.5757i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  2. William Ernest Henley · −0.5263 − 0.5779i · 0.046 away · Compare side by side
  3. Giles Farnaby · −0.6173 − 0.5494i · 0.050 away · Compare side by side
  4. Sir Lewis Morris · −0.5322 − 0.6018i · 0.051 away · Compare side by side
  5. Nora Hopper Chesson · −0.6119 − 0.5358i · 0.053 away · Compare side by side
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