Poem fractal

Alms

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

22 February 1892 to 19 October 1950 (~58)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The poet is not a man who says what he thinks, but a man who says what he feels.”

Emphasising emotional truth as central to poetic expression · Essay

More remarks (2)

Drawing the boundary…

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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 Burns · 0.0135 − 0.6265i · 0.008 away · Compare side by side
  2. Emily Dickinson · −0.0053 − 0.6376i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  3. Dorothy Greenwell · −0.0065 − 0.6336i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  4. James Joyce · 0.0286 − 0.6333i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  5. Robert Burns · −0.0029 − 0.6516i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
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