Poem fractal

Lost Blisses

by Arthur O'Shaughnessy

14 March 1844 to 30 January 1881 (~37)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“They are therefore essentially thoughts in marble, or poems of form, and it would therefore be unjustifiable to look in them for a sense which is not inherent in the purest Parian.”

Describing poetry as verbal sculpture whose meaning resides in form and beauty · Written statement quoted in the preface to Songs of a Worker (1881)

More remarks (15)

Drawing the boundary…

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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. William Cullen Bryant · −0.2478 − 0.5316i · 0.006 away · Compare side by side
  2. W. H. Davies · −0.2497 − 0.5163i · 0.010 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.2365 − 0.5324i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  4. Anne Knish · −0.2469 − 0.5405i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  5. James Joyce · −0.2517 − 0.5087i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
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