New Poem: Early Signs of Life (PLUS a POEMETRICS Sneak Preview)

Here is a poem that I wrote over four years ago to welcome my first nephew into the world, and I am recycling it here to welcome my second, who was just born this week.

As this week’s Poetry Friday host Sylvia Vardell would probably agree, it is never too early to introduce kids to poetry …

Early Signs of Life
By Ed DeCaria

In two weeks I’ve come very far,
Though life seems a little bizarre,
My head’s a bit floppy, my pants a bit soppy,
But everyone thinks I’m a star.

I’m prone to occasional fits,
Which cause an assiduous blitz,
But I’m always happy right after my nappy
Allows me to gather my wits.

I’m treated as if I’m a king,
But honestly, it ain’t no thing,
So I’ll just keep swingin’ and cryin’ and clingin’,
Who knows what tomorrow might bring?

Speaking of introductions, I am nearly ready to formally introduce POEMETRICS™ to the world. I dabbled a bit following the Madness! 2012 poetry tournament earlier this year, but soon I’ll share my vision of how we can use statistics — seemingly the very opposite of poetry — to better understand the genre and readers’ attitudes toward it, and ultimately to get more high-quality poetry to be read by more kids around the world. I hope to involve many of you in the process from the beginning, because the sooner we start, the sooner we can analyze fun charts like this …

What is it? It is a heat map showing average poem ratings (on a base scale of 1-10 even though only 2-8 are shown) across the dual spectrums of “mood” (1 = serious vs. 5 = funny) and “topic” (1 = natural vs. 5 = extraordinary). The data is fake (well, sorta fake) for now, but will soon be all too real!

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Vikram Madan

August 31, 2012 at 1:53 am · Say Something To This Person

‘Poetry Analytics’ is a fascinating idea. Look forward to seeing visualizations built of ‘real data’. (Lots of visualizations possible here – in addition to heat maps – depending on the type of numbers you might have…)

Ed DeCaria

September 3, 2012 at 10:37 am · Say Something To This Person

Thanks, Vikram. The idea is to “crowdsource” (and “kidsource”) the data, and then analyze it in all sorts of different ways, taking cues from other analytic worlds like baseball, consumer package goods, politics, stock markets, and more.

I’ll present a variety of visualizations and tabular views and then seek feedback before I get too heavily into any coding, so everyone who visits TKT will have a chance to influence the product as it evolves.

Joy Acey

August 31, 2012 at 5:57 am · Say Something To This Person

A heat map for poetry
incredible!
Will the dyes be
edible?
It looks like fun
but when you are done
will this baby be
credible?

Great idea, keep up the great work, Ed.

Jeanne Poland

August 31, 2012 at 10:15 am · Say Something To This Person

Funny;
Looks like a mother bird at a nest.
Reminds me of graphing of chaos at MIT.
Between David Harrison’s parody poems
http://davidlharrison.wordpress.com/2012/08/24/a-new-form-from-j-patrick-lewis/
and your Poemetrics, there is never a dull day on line!
Jeanne Poland