Poem fractal

Oily Weather

by Ernest Hemingway

21 July 1899 to 2 July 1961 (~62)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Easy writing makes hard reading.”

Suggesting that apparent ease in composition often produces weak prose · Conversation, recalled by Samuel Putnam, 1947

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. Adelaide Crapsey · −1.3553 − 0.5978i · 0.075 away · Compare side by side
  2. Sadakichi Hartmann · −1.1761 − 0.6385i · 0.119 away · Compare side by side
  3. Age
    William Bell Scott · −1.1026 − 0.6588i · 0.193 away · Compare side by side
  4. Patrick Reginald Chalmers · −1.0532 − 0.6533i · 0.242 away · Compare side by side
  5. Elizabeth Devereux · −1.0455 − 0.6477i · 0.249 away · Compare side by side
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