Poem fractal

A Life-Tomb

by Arthur O'Shaughnessy

14 March 1844 to 30 January 1881 (~37)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“A clerk in the Secretary's Office told me ‘it was all about my book’.”

Revealing his belief that his literary career had affected his treatment at the British Museum · British Museum statement, quoted by W. D. Paden

More remarks (15)

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. G. K. Chesterton · −0.4231 − 0.4449i · 0.008 away · Compare side by side
  2. John Dowland · −0.4128 − 0.4432i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  3. Alfred Lord Tennyson · −0.4183 − 0.4492i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  4. Nixon Waterman · −0.4364 − 0.4320i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  5. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.4360 − 0.4488i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
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