Poem fractal

I've A Pain In My Head

by Jane Austen

16 December 1775 to 18 July 1817 (~42)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I want to tell you that I have got my own darling child from London.”

Her affectionate response to receiving a newly printed copy of Pride and Prejudice · Letter to Cassandra Austen, 29 January 1813

More remarks (21)

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 · 0.2551 − 1.0704i · 0.049 away · Compare side by side
  2. A. A. Milne · 0.2604 − 1.0900i · 0.067 away · Compare side by side
  3. Emily Dickinson · 0.2709 − 0.9868i · 0.075 away · Compare side by side
  4. Walter J. Turner · 0.1582 − 0.9844i · 0.081 away · Compare side by side
  5. Helen Dudley · 0.1749 − 1.1107i · 0.083 away · Compare side by side
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