Poem fractal

The Irish in Gallipoli

by Francis Ledwidge

19 August 1887 to 31 July 1917 (~30)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I wrote wander songs for the cuckoos and winter songs for the robin.”

A concise description of how closely his early writing followed the natural world · 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. Siegfried Sassoon · −0.6799 + 0.1433i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  2. Stephen Crane · −0.6617 + 0.1827i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
  3. May (Julian) Sinclair · −0.6367 + 0.1832i · 0.049 away · Compare side by side
  4. William Soutar · −0.7259 + 0.1748i · 0.050 away · Compare side by side
  5. Patrick Reginald Chalmers · −0.6258 + 0.1231i · 0.063 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content