Poem fractal

The Poem Is by Maera

by Ernest Hemingway

21 July 1899 to 2 July 1961 (~62)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I wouldn't kid Our Lord if he was on the cross.”

Drawing a boundary between irreverent humour and circumstances demanding seriousness · Letter, 21 June 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. James Joyce · 0.4780 − 1.4224i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  2. James Joyce · 0.5331 − 1.4494i · 0.052 away · Compare side by side
  3. Robert Herrick · 0.5077 − 1.3522i · 0.088 away · Compare side by side
  4. Mina Loy · 0.3783 − 1.4247i · 0.105 away · Compare side by side
  5. John Wesley Holloway · 0.3858 − 1.3521i · 0.128 away · Compare side by side
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