Poem fractal

Parting

by Arthur Hugh Clough

1 January 1819 to 13 November 1861 (~42)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“All things become clear to me by work more than by anything else. Any kind of drudgery will help one out of the most uncommon either sentimental or speculative perplexity.”

Presenting purposeful work as an antidote to emotional and intellectual confusion · Letter, March 1852

More remarks (7)

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. A. Mary F. Robinson · 0.4561 − 0.3325i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  2. Alfred Austin · 0.4311 − 0.2965i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  3. A. A. Milne · 0.4945 − 0.3015i · 0.036 away · Compare side by side
  4. Edgar A. Guest · 0.4365 − 0.2748i · 0.042 away · Compare side by side
  5. Nora Hopper Chesson · 0.4249 − 0.3404i · 0.046 away · Compare side by side
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