Poem fractal

Hay and Hell and Booligal

by Banjo Paterson

17 February 1864 to 5 February 1941 (~77)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“All joking apart, the work is hard, monotonous, and dangerous, and the men deserve every credit. I don't think the world ever saw such a lot of horsemen got together as I have in my squadron.”

Paying sincere tribute to the courage and horsemanship of the men under his command · Letter to George Robertson from Egypt during the First World War

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. Walter Savage Landor · 0.0550 − 0.4617i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  2. Dylan Thomas · 0.0439 − 0.4563i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  3. Amelia Alderson Opie · 0.0585 − 0.4236i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  4. Violet Jacob · 0.0560 − 0.4223i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  5. May
    Christina Rossetti · 0.0862 − 0.4632i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
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