Poem fractal

Song of the Artesian Water

by Banjo Paterson

17 February 1864 to 5 February 1941 (~77)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Military appointments were like the Order of the Garter — there was no damned merit about them.”

Mocking privilege and the absence of merit in military advancement · Boer War reminiscence

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. Samuel Taylor Coleridge · −0.4286 + 1.1694i · 0.007 away · Compare side by side
  2. Banjo Paterson · −0.4174 + 1.1580i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edward Thomas · −0.4756 + 1.1850i · 0.045 away · Compare side by side
  4. Dylan Thomas · −0.3983 + 1.2069i · 0.046 away · Compare side by side
  5. Cale Young Rice · −0.3824 + 1.1930i · 0.052 away · Compare side by side
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