Poem fractal

The Flying Gang

by Banjo Paterson

17 February 1864 to 5 February 1941 (~77)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I am very dissatisfied with the thing; and am afraid I will have to do it over again to make it readable. The style is so stiff.”

Showing his willingness to judge his own prose severely and revise it · Letter to George Robertson, 15 December 1919

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. Dylan Thomas · −0.5213 + 0.2142i · 0.008 away · Compare side by side
  2. Ada Cambridge · −0.5303 + 0.2162i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  3. Dylan Thomas · −0.4952 + 0.2224i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  4. Arthur O'Shaughnessy · −0.5411 + 0.2347i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
  5. Georgia Douglas Johnson · −0.5269 + 0.2517i · 0.040 away · Compare side by side
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