Poem fractal

On Kiley's Run

by Banjo Paterson

17 February 1864 to 5 February 1941 (~77)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The lecturing is not so bad but the lonely travelling is awful. Anyhow the money is good which is the main thing.”

Balancing an honest admission of loneliness with practical good humour · Letter to George Robertson from Launceston, circa 1900

More remarks (19)

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. Ralph Waldo Emerson · −0.2219 − 0.3734i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  2. Edward Thomas · −0.2387 − 0.3739i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  3. Sir Philip Sidney · −0.2158 − 0.3692i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  4. Charles Cotton · −0.2445 − 0.3691i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  5. Robert Nichols · −0.2166 − 0.3505i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
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