Poem fractal

High Flight

by John Gillespie Magee Jr.

9 June 1922 to 11 December 1941 (~19)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I have no idea whether it is any good or not.”

A strikingly self-effacing comment about a poem that later became famous · Letter to his parents

More remarks (3)

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. Tobias George Smollett · −0.6470 + 0.3113i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  2. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. · −0.6752 + 0.2712i · 0.037 away · Compare side by side
  3. Patrick Reginald Chalmers · −0.6503 + 0.2660i · 0.049 away · Compare side by side
  4. Robert Browning · −0.6945 + 0.3675i · 0.062 away · Compare side by side
  5. Joseph Addison · −0.6302 + 0.3568i · 0.066 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content