Friday, November 02, 2007

tag cloud

Below you see a tag cloud generated by TagCrowd.com. TagCrowd is a web application for visualizing word frequencies in any user-supplied text by creating what is popularly known as a tag cloud or text cloud. I created a tag clowd by using as sourcetext the typescript of the first chapter of my new book. I've set it here to create an image of words based on frequency of use, asking it to choose only the top 50. I don't know where "oj" and such "words" came from, but "ltr" I know is the abbreviation for "letter" (as in an archival letter) used in the footnotes. And "Mac" is the first half of the surname "Mac Low" which the machine reads as a separate term because of the space. Thank goodness I've used "poetry" more often than "communist"!
created at TagCrowd.com
"TagCrowd is being used far beyond the online realm: as topic summaries for speeches and written works; as visual summaries for survey data mining; as name tags for conferences, cocktail parties or wherever new collaborations start; as resumes in a single glance; as visual poetry."

Visual poetry. That I can see.

Okay, then. Now I'm creating a tag cloud without the frequency numbers from the text of a magazine article about Gertrude Stein, a review by Philip Hensher of Janet Malcolm's new book about Gertrude and Alice. Here goes:
created at TagCrowd.com
Finally let's try a poem itself as the sourcetext. I use William Carlos Williams's "The Rose Is Obsolete" from Spring and All and here is the result:
created at TagCrowd.com
The original poem is here.