Poem fractal

The Hawthorn Tree

by Siegfried Sassoon

8 September 1886 to 1 September 1967 (~81)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority.”

Making moral protest an intentional act of resistance · 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. Robert Frost · 0.2209 − 0.6530i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  2. Robert Frost · 0.2365 − 0.6688i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  3. Ada Cambridge · 0.1933 − 0.6563i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  4. Charles Webbe · 0.2196 − 0.6928i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  5. Richard Jago · 0.1946 − 0.6485i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
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