Poem fractal

Barcarolle

by Arthur O'Shaughnessy

14 March 1844 to 30 January 1881 (~37)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“They are therefore essentially thoughts in marble, or poems of form.”

A concise description of poetry conceived through the language of sculpture · 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. Richard Monckton Milnes · 0.1217 + 0.9318i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  2. William Blake · 0.0624 + 0.9045i · 0.037 away · Compare side by side
  3. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt · 0.1059 + 0.9588i · 0.043 away · Compare side by side
  4. Edward Thomas · 0.0601 + 0.8910i · 0.045 away · Compare side by side
  5. Edgar Lee Masters · 0.1336 + 0.8647i · 0.063 away · Compare side by side
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