Poem fractal

Murmerings in a Field Hospital

by Carl Sandburg

6 January 1878 to 22 July 1967 (~89)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“A baby is God's opinion that life should go on.”

Finding hope and continuity in new life · Prose remark, source often cited without precise reference

More remarks (4)

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. Emily Dickinson · −0.4997 + 0.2599i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  2. Gordon Bottomley · −0.4945 + 0.2693i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  3. Georgia Douglas Johnson · −0.5269 + 0.2517i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  4. John Milton · −0.4938 + 0.2744i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  5. Algernon Charles Swinburne · −0.4859 + 0.2595i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
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