Poem fractal

The Private of the Buffs

by Francis Hastings Doyle

21 August 1810 to 8 June 1888 (~78)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“because it is rather a shy process to send a shoulder of mutton to the owner of a deer park.”

His self-deprecating reason for not sending Tennyson a copy of his newly published poems · Letter to Mr Cameron, 13 November 1866

More remarks (16)

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 · −0.4252 − 0.3502i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  2. Banjo Paterson · −0.4532 − 0.3376i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  3. William Butler Yeats · −0.4273 − 0.3222i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  4. John Stuart Blackie · −0.4130 − 0.3337i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  5. Christina Rossetti · −0.4519 − 0.3694i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
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