Poem fractal

Let Me Not Forget

by Rabindranath Tagore

7 May 1861 to 7 August 1941 (~80)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The butterfly counts not in months but moments, and has time enough.”

Celebrating the intensity of the present moment rather than the length of life · Prose aphorism, Stray Birds

More remarks (4)

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. William Blake · −0.3545 + 0.2154i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  2. Dylan Thomas · −0.3708 + 0.1911i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  3. John Ward · −0.3532 + 0.1743i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  4. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.3782 + 0.2181i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
  5. Charles Bertram Johnson · −0.3246 + 0.2282i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
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