Poem fractal

Survivors

by Siegfried Sassoon

8 September 1886 to 1 September 1967 (~81)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The nation is being sacrificed to the vanity and self-interest of the politicians.”

Condemning public policy pursued at the expense of human lives · 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. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.4745 + 0.7877i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  2. Ralph Waldo Emerson · −0.5170 + 0.7933i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  3. Alan Seeger · −0.4836 + 0.8335i · 0.039 away · Compare side by side
  4. Charles Tennyson Turner · −0.4510 + 0.8196i · 0.043 away · Compare side by side
  5. Carl Sandburg · −0.5170 + 0.7635i · 0.044 away · Compare side by side
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