Poem fractal

The Jacket

by Rudyard Kipling

30 December 1865 to 18 January 1936 (~71)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The man who does not want money is the one whom money does not dominate.”

A concise expression of the freedom that comes from independence from wealth. · Speech, Values in Life, 1907

More remarks (152)

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. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.1122 + 0.7549i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  2. Samuel Daniel · −0.0944 + 0.7809i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  3. Charlotte Smith · −0.0975 + 0.7820i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  4. Alan Seeger · −0.0812 + 0.7761i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  5. Cicely Fox Smith · −0.1265 + 0.7456i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
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