Poem fractal

Advice to a Son

by Ernest Hemingway

21 July 1899 to 2 July 1961 (~62)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“But never feel as good as while writing.”

A concise declaration of the pleasure he found in the act of writing itself · Letter to Malcolm Cowley, 14 November 1945

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. John Donne · 0.1673 + 0.0874i · 0.005 away · Compare side by side
  2. Charles Kingsley · 0.1718 + 0.0952i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  3. Alfred Douglas · 0.1873 + 0.0672i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  4. Edward James Mortimer Collins · 0.1804 + 0.1061i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  5. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 0.1997 + 0.0912i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
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