Word frequency analysis of poetry first lines
FirstLines is a Python 3.x project presented as a Jupyter Notebook.
This project was inspired by the book "Writing the Life Poetic" by Sage Cohen. Her book is filled with interesting ideas to see things differently which have inspired creativity in my writing both poetry and prose. One of her suggestions is to use other persons poem titles as a jumping off points for your own ideas. She also has many other suggestions for creativity and I recommend her book.
This got me thinking about the process of writing. To me a poem or story title seems to be mostly an afterthought. What I was really interested in was the first line. The first line of a poem, the first line of a book. Anyone who has sat in front of a blank page, with an assignment due or project to be started understands that it is this beginning line that is often the hardest part.
This lead me to looking at first lines, first lines of novels or for this project, first lines of poems. I decided this would be a good project to create another Jupyter Notebook and continue to practice my Python coding.
Program: FirstLines.py Python 3.6.2
Input: 6 poets, 225 poems randomly selected from each. A total of 1350 first lines.
Program Operation:
-- Read in 225 first lines from each poet.
-- Perform a word frequency analysis on the words used by each poet in their first lines.
Program Output: A CSV file for each poet showing the frequency analysis of words used in the first lines.
Analysis: The focus of this project was really the Python programming and the Jupyter but I also did some simple analysis which can be seen in quick_analysis.jpg