Poem fractal

Litany

by Langston Hughes

1 February 1902 to 22 May 1967 (~65)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“For poems are like rainbows; they escape you quickly.”

Describing poetic inspiration as vivid but fleeting · Autobiographical prose, collected works

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. Robert Louis Stevenson · 0.2904 − 0.6936i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  2. Christina Rossetti · 0.2907 − 0.6899i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edward James Mortimer Collins · 0.2493 − 0.7163i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  4. Arthur Symons · 0.2880 − 0.6873i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  5. Lewis Carroll · 0.2731 − 0.7493i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
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