Poem fractal

A Tear and a Smile

by Kahlil Gibran

6 January 1883 to 10 April 1931 (~48)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Vain are the beliefs and teachings that make man miserable, and false is the goodness that leads him into sorrow and despair, for it is man's purpose to be happy on this earth.”

Happiness treated as a duty of faith, not a luxury · Spirits Rebellious, Khalil the Heretic, 1908

More remarks (54)

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. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 0.1263 + 0.3714i · 0.005 away · Compare side by side
  2. Robert Louis Stevenson · 0.1300 + 0.3871i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  3. A. A. Milne · 0.1597 + 0.3517i · 0.040 away · Compare side by side
  4. Marsden Hartley · 0.0700 + 0.3806i · 0.058 away · Compare side by side
  5. Ralph Waldo Emerson · 0.0722 + 0.3455i · 0.064 away · Compare side by side
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