Poem fractal

Now I am on the earth

by Arthur O'Shaughnessy

14 March 1844 to 30 January 1881 (~37)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I wish to provide against the series of poems which I have associated with the art of sculpture being judged from an erroneous point of view.”

Guarding his work against interpretations that ignored its intended artistic form · Written statement 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. Joseph Seamon Cotter Sr. · −0.0687 − 0.6249i · 0.000 away · Compare side by side
  2. Witter Bynner · −0.0729 − 0.6254i · 0.005 away · Compare side by side
  3. Christina Rossetti · −0.0750 − 0.6174i · 0.010 away · Compare side by side
  4. Gerard Manley Hopkins · −0.0750 − 0.6329i · 0.010 away · Compare side by side
  5. Richard · −0.0784 − 0.6284i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
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