Poem fractal

The Liner, She’s a Lady

by Rudyard Kipling

30 December 1865 to 18 January 1936 (~71)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I would like you better to be that man, because from the lower point of view it doesn’t pay to be obsessed by the desire of wealth for wealth’s sake.”

Encouraging independence from material ambition. · Speech, Values in Life, 1907

More remarks (152)

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. William Lisle Bowles · 0.1553 + 0.7568i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  2. William Philpot · 0.1303 + 0.7924i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 0.1137 + 0.7485i · 0.045 away · Compare side by side
  4. Richard · 0.1242 + 0.8111i · 0.046 away · Compare side by side
  5. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt · 0.1861 + 0.8060i · 0.048 away · Compare side by side
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