Poem fractal

The Old Woman

by Joseph Campbell

15 July 1879 to 6 June 1944 (~65)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Coaching by the stars, night-walking—all my best thoughts, I find, come to me that way.”

Linking solitude, movement and darkness with the awakening of thought · Mearing Stones, Coaching by the Stars

More remarks (39)

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. Louis Untermeyer · 0.1096 − 1.3994i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  2. Emily Dickinson · 0.1076 − 1.3721i · 0.047 away · Compare side by side
  3. A. A. Milne · 0.0319 − 1.3164i · 0.111 away · Compare side by side
  4. Hilda Doolittle · 0.0248 − 1.3038i · 0.126 away · Compare side by side
  5. Bede the Venerable · 0.0694 − 1.2621i · 0.153 away · Compare side by side
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