Poem fractal

The Zeppelin Armada

by Jessie Pope

18 March 1868 to 14 December 1941 (~73)

Browse poets 678

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. Emily Brontë · −0.1173 + 0.0816i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  2. John Donne · −0.1270 + 0.0857i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  3. May
    Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.1156 + 0.0980i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  4. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.0945 + 0.0986i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  5. Philip Bourke Marston · −0.0893 + 0.0555i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
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