Poem fractal

Nightingale and Cuckoo

by Alfred Austin

30 May 1835 to 2 June 1913 (~78)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Show me a man who cannot bother to do little things, and I'll show you a man who cannot be trusted to do big things.”

Suggesting that reliability is revealed through attention to small responsibilities · Prose writings / commonly attributed

More remarks (3)

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. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 0.1388 + 0.5955i · 0.005 away · Compare side by side
  2. Anna Hempstead Branch · 0.1465 + 0.5945i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  3. Langston Hughes · 0.1185 + 0.5913i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  4. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 0.1556 + 0.5812i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  5. Hartley Coleridge · 0.1570 + 0.6149i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
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