Poem fractal

If-

by Rudyard Kipling

30 December 1865 to 18 January 1936 (~71)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The first condition of right thought is right sensation.”

A concise expression of the importance he placed on direct perception and sensory experience. · Introduction to A Choice of Kipling's Verse, 1941, attributed to Kipling

More remarks (152)

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. Thomas Hardy · 0.4142 + 0.4144i · 0.042 away · Compare side by side
  2. Robert W. Service · 0.4469 + 0.4085i · 0.053 away · Compare side by side
  3. D. H. Lawrence · 0.3532 + 0.3494i · 0.059 away · Compare side by side
  4. Christina Rossetti · 0.4421 + 0.4259i · 0.063 away · Compare side by side
  5. Marianne Moore · 0.3909 + 0.3032i · 0.072 away · Compare side by side
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