Forum / Poetry Assessor

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Jun 07, 06:42am

  Try this for size. The program measures amateur and professional characteristics of a poem using computational linguistics. An article that discusses method of the program can be found at the web site:

  http://www.poetryassessor.com/poetry/

  Two of three of my poems measured <.5, or amateur by this scale, and one measured >.5, or professional by this scale.

  The amateur-to-professional range of ten poems and prose poems and stories I tested:

  .2165 for my poem "This Is Why I Loved You" and 2.3899 for my story "Neat"

  A list of professional poems and scores accompanies the article. Poetry Assessor at Twitter tweets scores of other poems.

• 
  Letitia Coyne

  Jun 07, 07:28am

  0.303056603774
  1.5017124183
  0.581966101695
  -3.21266666667

  :D

  Either it is extraordinarily insightful computing or it fails to recognize genius.

  These are my scores for four of the poems I have here. I was already fairly confident poetry was not going to be my road to riches. Poetry assessor has graciously agreed.

  Lxx

• 
  Elizabeth Kate Switaj

  Jun 07, 09:12pm

  I'm not sure I understand the meaning of "professional" as it applies to poetry.

• 
  Matthew Robinson

  Jun 08, 02:31am

  I like what Elizabeth said, though I suppose it--"professional"--could mean the difference between someone who's been writing poems for 20 years versus someone writing their first poem ever. Which, depending on the specific professional and the specific amateur, could still mean nothing.

  I don't consider myself a professional, or an amateur. I just say writer.

  So, with the understanding that this essentially means nothing, that I'm not interested in status in regards to myself, that this is just a fun little experiment, I entered four of my stories into this at random, three of which scored higher than 2.4, one of which scored 1.3--and, personally, I like the 1.3 story the best; I consider it among my best work.

  FUN STUFF!

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Jun 08, 03:33pm

  Matt, favorites of my own had lesser scores as well. I see what you mean.

  I ran my poem "Florence's Weekend" through the Assessor. It is included in my Dusie chapbook (2008-2009). The Assessor gave a score of 3.92. I paid for the publication of that poem in a hardcover anthology. It appears as the first poem of the volume, the editors' decision. I presented it to my mother. Robin Reagler wrote at Big Window about my choice of vanity press for my first published poem. The poem, ever since I wrote it in 1982 or so, has been a crowd pleaser, among those who enjoy popular poetry and those who are avant gardist by taste. It has seen non-vanity press reprinting in journals.

• 
  Laura E.

  Jun 08, 03:52pm

  Fun idea but is only helpful if the writer wants to assess how closely their work meets the criteria that the test creators use. I ran "We Real Cool" by Gwendolyn Brooks through this program. It got a -3.13766666667. Dean Young's "Crash Test Dummies of an Imperfect God" got 0.809056179775.

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Jun 08, 03:56pm

  I love "We Real Cool"! I'll check out Young's poem as well.

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Jun 08, 03:58pm

  Snarly-religious! Like.

• 
  Laura E.

  Jun 08, 04:07pm

  I love his work. I like to think he'd appreciate flummoxing a poetry assessment program.

• You must log in to reply to this thread.