Poem fractal

The Last Word

by Matthew Arnold

24 December 1822 to 15 April 1888 (~66)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Culture is a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world.”

Defining culture as an active pursuit of intellectual and moral excellence · Culture and Anarchy (essay)

More remarks (4)

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. Emily Dickinson · −0.2297 − 0.6215i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  2. Alexander Anderson · −0.2489 − 0.5993i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edward Shanks · −0.2273 − 0.6250i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  4. A. Mary F. Robinson · −0.2536 − 0.5989i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  5. Patrick Reginald Chalmers · −0.2591 − 0.6086i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
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