Poem fractal

The Garden Party

by Hilaire Belloc

27 July 1870 to 16 July 1953 (~83)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The first principle of true teaching is that nothing can be taught.”

Emphasising the learner’s active role in education · Essay on education, commonly attributed

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. Bernard Barton · 0.0312 − 1.0332i · 0.004 away · Compare side by side
  2. Emily Dickinson · 0.0348 − 1.0072i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  3. Arthur Symons · 0.0416 − 1.0016i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  4. A. A. Milne · 0.0028 − 1.0101i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
  5. Emily Dickinson · 0.0500 − 1.0584i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
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