Poem fractal

The Crusader Returns from Captivity

by G. K. Chesterton

29 May 1874 to 14 June 1936 (~62)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered.”

A playful revaluation of difficulty through attitude and imagination · Prose book

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. Banjo Paterson · −0.2296 + 1.3636i · 0.076 away · Compare side by side
  2. Edgar A. Guest · −0.2246 + 1.3680i · 0.083 away · Compare side by side
  3. John Masefield · −0.2543 + 1.2281i · 0.085 away · Compare side by side
  4. William Butler Yeats · −0.2025 + 1.2680i · 0.089 away · Compare side by side
  5. Thomas Hardy · −0.1817 + 1.3202i · 0.101 away · Compare side by side
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