Poem fractal

A Happy Vicar I Might Have Been

by George Orwell

25 June 1903 to 21 January 1950 (~47)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics’. All issues are political issues.”

Emphasising the unavoidable political dimension of public life · Essay

More remarks (4)

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. Rupert Brooke · 0.0027 − 0.7048i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  2. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 0.0031 − 0.6816i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  3. Sir Charles Sedley · −0.0170 − 0.6789i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  4. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · 0.0032 − 0.7119i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  5. Letitia Elizabeth Landon · 0.0059 − 0.7120i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
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