Poem fractal

Lines and Squares

by A. A. Milne

18 January 1882 to 31 January 1956 (~74)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Promise me you'll always remember: You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.”

Offering reassurance about hidden courage and self-worth · Prose, Winnie-the-Pooh

More remarks (15)

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. Patrick Reginald Chalmers · −0.0914 + 0.2932i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  2. John Keats · −0.0959 + 0.2995i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  3. Ralph Waldo Emerson · −0.0954 + 0.3016i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  4. Robert Browning · −0.0333 + 0.3072i · 0.039 away · Compare side by side
  5. Algernon Charles Swinburne · −0.0334 + 0.3120i · 0.041 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content