Poem fractal

Unseen Spirits

by Nathaniel Parker Willis

20 January 1806 to 20 January 1867 (~61)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“My veins are teeming with the quicksilver spirit which my mother gave me. Whatever I accomplish must be gained by ardor, and not by patience.”

Attributing creative energy to inherited temperament rather than steady application · Letter or personal reflection, as recorded in contemporary accounts

More remarks (1)

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. James Weldon Johnson · −0.4533 − 0.5079i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  2. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.4419 − 0.5024i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  3. Bliss Carman · −0.4354 − 0.5361i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  4. George Chapman · −0.4609 − 0.5244i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Ernest Henley · −0.4599 − 0.5104i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
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