Poem fractal

To Germany

by Charles Sorley

19 May 1895 to 13 October 1915 (~20)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The horrible thankfulness when one sees that the next man is dead: 'We won't have to carry him in under fire, thank God; dragging will do.' One is hardened by now: purged of all false pity: perhaps more selfish than before.”

Honest account of the brutalising effects of combat · Letter from the front

More remarks (3)

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. Siegfried Sassoon · −0.4022 + 0.2477i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  2. Thomas Moore · −0.4190 + 0.2308i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
  3. Alice Dunbar Nelson · −0.4276 + 0.2970i · 0.037 away · Compare side by side
  4. John Donne · −0.4442 + 0.2861i · 0.040 away · Compare side by side
  5. Edmund Clarence Stedman · −0.3695 + 0.2821i · 0.046 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content