Poem fractal

All is Well

by Arthur Hugh Clough

1 January 1819 to 13 November 1861 (~42)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“A bad style is as bad as bad manners, and manners you admit do mean something. Things really ill-written it does one a little harm to read.”

Linking careless expression with a failure of consideration for the reader · Letter, February 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. Christina Rossetti · −0.1443 − 0.2343i · 0.010 away · Compare side by side
  2. Thomas Moore · −0.1523 − 0.2296i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  3. Ezra Pound · −0.1358 − 0.2050i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  4. George Marion McClellan · −0.1401 − 0.2538i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  5. Patrick Reginald Chalmers · −0.1115 − 0.2066i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
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