Poem fractal

The Battle of Copenhagen

by Ernest Hemingway

21 July 1899 to 2 July 1961 (~62)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish.”

Rejecting predetermined symbolism while leaving readers free to find meanings beyond the literal story · Letter to Bernard Berenson, 13 September 1952

More remarks (61)

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. W. H. Davies · −0.4076 − 0.1707i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  2. Dylan Thomas · −0.3958 − 0.1519i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  3. Dylan Thomas · −0.3980 − 0.1427i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  4. Jean Ingelow · −0.3960 − 0.1912i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  5. Robert Burns · −0.4243 − 0.1610i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
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