Poem fractal

Does it Matter?

by Siegfried Sassoon

8 September 1886 to 1 September 1967 (~81)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I believe that it may be possible to make the sufferings of the men less acute by exposing the callousness and insincerity of the politicians.”

Linking truthful speech with responsibility towards soldiers · Open letter, 1917

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. Barry Cornwall · 0.0223 − 0.2324i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  2. Alfred Lord Tennyson · 0.0162 − 0.2350i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  3. Richard Edwardes · 0.0321 − 0.2595i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  4. John Drinkwater · 0.0272 − 0.2613i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  5. Orrick Johns · 0.0428 − 0.2151i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
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