Poem fractal

I Am Not Skilled to Understand

by Dorothy Greenwell

6 December 1821 to 29 March 1882 (~61)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The power of faith is not in the person who exercises it but in the object in which it rests.”

Directing attention away from the believer’s strength and towards the object of faith · Religious prose

More remarks (2)

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. Emily Dickinson · −0.0053 − 0.6376i · 0.004 away · Compare side by side
  2. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 0.0090 − 0.6325i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  3. Robert Burns · −0.0029 − 0.6516i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  4. Robert Burns · 0.0135 − 0.6265i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  5. Percy Bysshe Shelley · −0.0263 − 0.6169i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
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