Poem fractal

Early Evening Quarrel

by Langston Hughes

1 February 1902 to 22 May 1967 (~65)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I did not believe political directives could be successfully applied to creative writing.”

Maintaining that genuine creative work cannot simply obey an ideological programme · Autobiography, I Wonder as I Wander

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. Emily Dickinson · 1.0661 − 0.9730i · 0.096 away · Compare side by side
  2. Pierre de Ronsard · 0.9399 − 0.8451i · 0.099 away · Compare side by side
  3. Nora Hopper Chesson · 0.9611 − 0.8133i · 0.099 away · Compare side by side
  4. Antonio Machado · 0.9641 − 0.8072i · 0.102 away · Compare side by side
  5. James Joyce · 0.9318 − 0.9186i · 0.106 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content