Poem fractal

To a Young Murderess

by Arthur O'Shaughnessy

14 March 1844 to 30 January 1881 (~37)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“My meaning is that Art is good—is an incalculable gain to man.”

Expressing an unusually direct faith in the value of artistic creation · 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. John Donne · 0.0374 + 0.3251i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  2. Hannah More · 0.0465 + 0.3124i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  3. Sara Teasdale · 0.0072 + 0.2972i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  4. Gerard Manley Hopkins · 0.0558 + 0.3030i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
  5. Charles Whitehead · 0.0023 + 0.3402i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
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