Poem fractal

Growing Up

by A. A. Milne

18 January 1882 to 31 January 1956 (~74)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“War is something of man's own fostering, and if all mankind renounces it, then it is no longer there.”

His pacifist conviction that war is a human choice, not an inevitability · Peace with Honour, 1934

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. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.0381 − 0.6629i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  2. Phoebe Cary · −0.0588 − 0.6559i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  3. Mary Coleridge · −0.0298 − 0.6576i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  4. William Wordsworth · −0.0591 − 0.6992i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  5. Anonymous · −0.0431 − 0.6445i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
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