Poem fractal

Silences

by Arthur O'Shaughnessy

14 March 1844 to 30 January 1881 (~37)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“My artistic object is gained if, in them, I have kept strictly within the lines assigned to the sculptor’s art.”

Defining artistic success as fidelity to the formal discipline of sculpture · 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. Amy Lowell · 0.3234 + 0.0294i · 0.004 away · Compare side by side
  2. Robert Browning · 0.3375 + 0.0221i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  3. Anne Whitney · 0.3439 + 0.0269i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  4. Ella Wheeler Wilcox · 0.3379 + 0.0571i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  5. J.G. Holland · 0.3391 + 0.0053i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
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