Poem fractal

Bombardment

by Richard Aldington

8 July 1892 to 27 July 1962 (~70)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.”

A sardonic view of romantic love as an instinctive biological strategy · Novel, Death of a Hero

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. Nixon Waterman · −0.4364 − 0.4320i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  2. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.4360 − 0.4488i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  3. Joanna Baillie · −0.4774 − 0.4297i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  4. Bayard Taylor · −0.4782 − 0.4347i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  5. Thomas Hood · −0.4556 − 0.4615i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
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