Poem fractal

The Questioning Spirit

by Arthur Hugh Clough

1 January 1819 to 13 November 1861 (~42)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Ignorance is a poor kind of innocence. The world is wiser than the wise, and as innocent as the innocent; and it has long been found out what is the best way of taking things.”

Arguing that genuine understanding requires experience beyond sheltered learning · Letter to a friend, 19 June 1850

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. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 0.1137 + 0.7485i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  2. Edgar Lee Masters · 0.0840 + 0.7412i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  3. William Shakespeare · 0.1149 + 0.7340i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  4. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 0.0803 + 0.7930i · 0.040 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Philpot · 0.1303 + 0.7924i · 0.045 away · Compare side by side
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