Poem fractal

An Astrologer's Song

by Rudyard Kipling

30 December 1865 to 18 January 1936 (~71)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Being artists, these men must needs do the work that is laid upon them to do, and while they are doing it they are apt to overlook a number of important worldly considerations.”

Describing the tension between artistic vocation and practical worldly concerns. · Speech, The Claims of Art, 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. Sara Teasdale · −0.4319 − 0.8641i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  2. Emily Dickinson · −0.4228 − 0.8597i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  3. Carl Sandburg · −0.4547 − 0.8486i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
  4. Emily Dickinson · −0.4408 − 0.9163i · 0.040 away · Compare side by side
  5. Emily Dickinson · −0.4649 − 0.9080i · 0.044 away · Compare side by side
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