Poem fractal

A Sound Is in My Ear To-Day

by Alexander Anderson

30 April 1845 to 11 July 1909 (~64)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I put my whole heart into my verses, for they are the direct outcome of what I have felt and seen.”

Reflecting on the authentic connection between lived experience and literary expression · Autobiographical sketch / introductory note

More remarks (1)

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. A. Mary F. Robinson · −0.2536 − 0.5989i · 0.005 away · Compare side by side
  2. Frederic William Moorman · −0.2486 − 0.5920i · 0.007 away · Compare side by side
  3. A.E.Housman · −0.2432 − 0.5911i · 0.010 away · Compare side by side
  4. Robert Herrick · −0.2606 − 0.6009i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  5. Edgar Allan Poe · −0.2611 − 0.5963i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
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