Poem fractal

The Gardener

by Francis Ledwidge

19 August 1887 to 31 July 1917 (~30)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I have always been very quiet and bashful and a great mystery in my own place.”

A candid description of the reserve that marked him from childhood · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

More remarks (94)

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. Dylan Thomas · −0.3708 + 0.1911i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  2. Richard · −0.3804 + 0.2157i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.3782 + 0.2181i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  4. Dylan Thomas · −0.3910 + 0.1621i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
  5. Ella Wheeler Wilcox · −0.4154 + 0.1896i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
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