Poem fractal

Outcast

by Ada Cambridge

21 November 1844 to 19 July 1926 (~82)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“We never minded these little things, holding the view that a good servant was a good servant, and that her religion was her own business.”

A matter-of-fact statement of religious tolerance in everyday life · Memoir, Thirty Years in Australia (1903)

More remarks (39)

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. Dylan Thomas · −0.5213 + 0.2142i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  2. Banjo Paterson · −0.5133 + 0.2137i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  3. Arthur O'Shaughnessy · −0.5411 + 0.2347i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  4. Nora Hopper Chesson · −0.5580 + 0.2010i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
  5. Dylan Thomas · −0.4952 + 0.2224i · 0.036 away · Compare side by side
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