Poem fractal

Song of Palms

by Arthur O'Shaughnessy

14 March 1844 to 30 January 1881 (~37)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Truly, I think that a little ‘Art for Art’ has already done a great deal of good in England, and that a little more is needed, and would be equally beneficial.”

Defending the value of beauty and artistic freedom in a practical age · Letter quoted in the preface to Songs of a Worker (1881)

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. James Russell Lowell · −0.5251 − 0.4965i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  2. Joanna Baillie · −0.5224 − 0.4946i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  3. William Makepeace Thackeray · −0.5057 − 0.5016i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  4. Edgar Lee Masters · −0.5505 − 0.5089i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  5. Francis Hastings Doyle · −0.5278 − 0.5410i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
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