Poem fractal

The Old Australian Ways

by Banjo Paterson

17 February 1864 to 5 February 1941 (~77)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“You see, I understand them and their lives, and they know it.”

Explaining the bond between his writing and the people of the Australian bush · Interview with Bernard Espinasse, Table Talk, 31 January 1896

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. William Wordsworth · −0.4948 − 0.4249i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  2. Joanna Baillie · −0.4774 − 0.4297i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  3. Bayard Taylor · −0.4782 − 0.4347i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  4. Felicia Dorothea Hemans · −0.5101 − 0.4452i · 0.036 away · Compare side by side
  5. Edgar Allan Poe · −0.5251 − 0.4010i · 0.038 away · Compare side by side
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