Poem fractal

All armies are the same

by Ernest Hemingway

21 July 1899 to 2 July 1961 (~62)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, bullshit detector.”

Stress­ing the need for rigorous judgement and resistance to false sentiment · Interview

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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. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 0.5316 − 0.4718i · 0.037 away · Compare side by side
  2. Edward Thomas · 0.5493 − 0.5469i · 0.042 away · Compare side by side
  3. Sir Philip Sidney · 0.5590 − 0.5437i · 0.045 away · Compare side by side
  4. Richard · 0.5637 − 0.4655i · 0.054 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Wordsworth · 0.4835 − 0.4690i · 0.062 away · Compare side by side
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