Poem fractal

Freedom

by John Barbour

c. 1316 to 13 March 1395 (~79)

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. Siegfried Sassoon · −0.1988 + 0.2780i · 0.010 away · Compare side by side
  2. Dylan Thomas · −0.1929 + 0.2924i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  3. Sir Walter Raleigh · −0.1896 + 0.2954i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  4. Alfred Lord Tennyson · −0.2284 + 0.2778i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Wordsworth · −0.1926 + 0.3020i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
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