Poem fractal

The Kingfisher

by William Canton

27 October 1845 to 2 May 1926 (~81)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Of course I have kept to the sunny, the idyllic side of the subject. Why not? I know there is another side, but this is a true side, it is the side always turned to me, and I am well pleased with it, just as most people are well pleased with the single sunny side of the moon.”

Defence of focusing on the joyful, imaginative aspect of childhood rather than its darker realities · Introduction or digression in Children’s Sayings (1900)

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. Robert Burns · −0.4568 − 0.0758i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  2. Nora Hopper Chesson · −0.4746 − 0.1009i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  3. Nixon Waterman · −0.4774 − 0.1095i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  4. William Butler Yeats · −0.4610 − 0.0574i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
  5. Banjo Paterson · −0.4905 − 0.1020i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
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