Poem fractal

Mise Raifteirí an File

by Antoine Ó Raifteirí

c. 30 March 1779 to 25 December 1835 (~56)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Well planed you are; the carpenter that planed you knew his trade.”

Original: B’fhearr liom go mór imirt is ól, ná maidin Domhnaigh triall chun Aifrinn. — A light, appreciative compliment that shows the blind poet’s sharp ear for form and his readiness to praise beauty he could only sense. · Conversation at a dance, as reported in oral tradition collected by Lady Gregory (Irish Gaelic)

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. Elizabeth Thomas · 0.6648 − 0.5506i · 0.007 away · Compare side by side
  2. Robert Browning · 0.6630 − 0.5174i · 0.039 away · Compare side by side
  3. Samuel Hoffenstein · 0.6226 − 0.5681i · 0.048 away · Compare side by side
  4. Richard Aldington · 0.7273 − 0.5211i · 0.068 away · Compare side by side
  5. Christina Rossetti · 0.6692 − 0.4836i · 0.073 away · Compare side by side
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