Poem fractal

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by Ernest Hemingway

21 July 1899 to 2 July 1961 (~62)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I've seen a lot of patriots and they all died just like anybody else if it hurt bad enough.”

Stripping patriotic rhetoric of its power in the face of physical mortality · Letter, 12 January 1936

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. George Henry Boker · −0.0961 − 0.5569i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  2. Martin Peerson · −0.1265 − 0.5533i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  3. Alexander Pope · −0.1126 − 0.5302i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  4. Robert Southey · −0.1266 − 0.5359i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  5. Mary Lamb · −0.1343 − 0.5458i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
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