Poem fractal

Ask not how it came I died

by Robert Nichols

6 September 1893 to 17 December 1944 (~51)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“It was written by a man for mankind's sake, that might once more become that which is humane not an empty phrase.”

Presents Sassoon's book as an appeal to recover the meaning of humanity · Introduction to Counter-Attack and Other Poems, 1918

More remarks (10)

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. Nora Hopper Chesson · −0.1281 − 0.7382i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  2. Ralph Waldo Emerson · −0.1125 − 0.7515i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  3. Christina Rossetti · −0.1001 − 0.7410i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  4. William Corkine · −0.1255 − 0.7214i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  5. Richard · −0.1341 − 0.7495i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content