Poem fractal

Say not the Struggle Nought Availeth

by Arthur Hugh Clough

1 January 1819 to 13 November 1861 (~42)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“People won’t read Chaucer against their ears.”

Insisting that the sound and metre of poetry must be made perceptible to readers · Letter to Charles Eliot Norton, 9 December 1853

More remarks (7)

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. George Herbert · −0.2070 − 0.3393i · 0.006 away · Compare side by side
  2. Paul Laurence Dunbar · −0.2060 − 0.3484i · 0.007 away · Compare side by side
  3. William Wordsworth · −0.2008 − 0.3342i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  4. James Stephens · −0.2100 − 0.3384i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  5. Charles Mackay · −0.2146 − 0.3473i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
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