Poem fractal

Dirge for a Soldier

by George Henry Boker

6 October 1823 to 2 January 1890 (~67)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I, too, have endeavoured to find some test by which I might determine the exact amount of poetry existing in any given number of words, as a chemist determines the quantity of salt in so many drops of sea-water.”

An admission that the nature of poetry resists any exact measure · Letter to Richard Henry Stoddard, 21 May 1852

More remarks (5)

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. Ernest Hemingway · −0.1105 − 0.5530i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  2. A. Mary F. Robinson · −0.0825 − 0.5680i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  3. Martin Peerson · −0.1265 − 0.5533i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  4. Emily Brontë · −0.0821 − 0.5842i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  5. Alexander Pope · −0.1126 − 0.5302i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
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