Poem fractal

Ode

by Arthur O'Shaughnessy

14 March 1844 to 30 January 1881 (~37)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“As most of the poets translated are my immediate contemporaries”

Reflecting his unusually close engagement with the living French poets whose work he introduced to English readers · Draft preface to his translations

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. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.2883 − 0.3885i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  2. Arthur O'Shaughnessy · −0.2813 − 0.4077i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  3. Robert Burns · −0.2673 − 0.4118i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  4. Sara Teasdale · −0.2529 − 0.3789i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  5. Christina Rossetti · −0.2934 − 0.4023i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
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