Poem fractal

Jock

by Banjo Paterson

17 February 1864 to 5 February 1941 (~77)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Where Shelley wrote the song of the skylark our poets have written the wail of the curlew.”

Contrasting European lyricism with the melancholy voice of Australian poetry · Australian Local Colour, radio script written for the Australian Broadcasting Commission, 1934

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. Lord Byron · −0.4462 − 0.0127i · 0.004 away · Compare side by side
  2. Hart Crane · −0.4591 − 0.0262i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  3. A. A. Milne · −0.4739 − 0.0292i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
  4. Hart Crane · −0.4115 − 0.0129i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
  5. Emily Dickinson · −0.4482 + 0.0321i · 0.041 away · Compare side by side
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