Poem fractal

Shoes and Stockings

by A. A. Milne

18 January 1882 to 31 January 1956 (~74)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Childhood is not the happiest time of one's life, but only to a child is pure happiness possible.”

A clear-eyed correction of nostalgic sentiment about childhood · It's Too Late Now: The Autobiography of a Writer, 1939

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. T. S. Eliot · −0.5726 − 0.0234i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  2. Dylan Thomas · −0.6172 − 0.0137i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  3. William Ernest Henley · −0.5977 − 0.0508i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  4. Emily Dickinson · −0.5925 + 0.0079i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
  5. John Attey · −0.6082 + 0.0066i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content