Poem fractal

To-Day

by John Boyle O'Reilly

28 June 1844 to 10 August 1890 (~46)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“A vote, like a law, is no good unless there is an arm behind it; it cannot be enforced. This is a shameful truth, perhaps, but it is true.”

Pragmatic view of the limits of suffrage without power · Editorial / public statement

More remarks (2)

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. Thomas Tomkins · 0.1241 − 0.9321i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  2. Emily Dickinson · 0.1265 − 0.9328i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  3. Thomas Hardy · 0.0946 − 0.8831i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
  4. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois · 0.1505 − 0.9186i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
  5. Edward Smyth Jones · 0.1209 − 0.8666i · 0.043 away · Compare side by side
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