Poem fractal

For the Fallen

by Laurence Binyon

10 August 1869 to 10 March 1943 (~74)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The deepest intuitions of a race are deposited in its art; no criticism can make these wholly articulate in an adequate form by means of language.”

On art as a vessel for insights deeper than criticism can fully express. · Essay, The Flight of the Dragon (1911)

More remarks (39)

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 Clarence Mangan · −0.1905 + 0.2106i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  2. Mary Webb · −0.1816 + 0.1961i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  3. James Graham · −0.1919 + 0.2123i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  4. D. H. Lawrence · −0.1870 + 0.1850i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Blake · −0.1851 + 0.2125i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
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