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Variational sestinoid spiral (seed #281698895)
| Radius: 0.00 | The passing of the loveliness | |
| Phase: 0.00 | ||
| Radius: 1.25 | And underneath the forest lingered away | |
| Phase: 0.90 | The passing of the dusky boughs | |
| Radius: 2.50 | The visible moon and moonlight lay | |
| Phase: 1.80 | The passing day of yester’d bough, | |
| Of crystal moonlight lingering away | ||
| Radius: 3.75 | The smallest day-wind’s cheek, | |
| Phase: 2.69 | A space of yesterday’s boughs, | |
| Of a crystal forest lingered away | ||
| And underneath the moonlight lay | ||
| Radius: 5.00 | His place is so late, and troddened, | |
| Phase: 3.59 | The light of barren’s blaze | |
| Of a crystal moonlight still | ||
| Of crystal moonlight lay away | ||
| The solitary road and moonlight on him, | ||
| Radius: 6.25 | His long-fickers of a boughs | |
| Phase: 4.49 | Of a crystal forest lingering away | |
| Of crystal moonlight still | ||
| The mystic moonlight lay away | ||
| The solitary road and moonlight on him, | ||
| He found it up, and ’twixt anew, | ||
| Radius: 7.50 | As a crystal glimmering stream | |
| Phase: 5.39 | Of crystal sunshine far away | |
| Of crystal moonlight lay | ||
| The solitary moonlight shining down, | ||
| And leaving a week, and down a little boat, | ||
| ’tis long ago and ’twixt anew. | ||
| Not a long sea-trees of the barley | ||
| Radius: 0.00 | The passing of the loveliness | |
| Phase: 0.00 |
Variational sestinoid spiral (seed #510616808)
| Radius: 0.00 | A thing is sweetness, sweet and light | |
| Phase: 0.00 | ||
| Radius: 1.25 | A thing is sweetness, sweetest | |
| Phase: 0.90 | A thing of manly, like a cloud | |
| Radius: 2.50 | A thing is everlasting light | |
| Phase: 1.80 | A thing of earth, so far a cloud | |
| A thing is still, as thou shalt find | ||
| Radius: 3.75 | A thing of earthly blaze | |
| Phase: 2.69 | A thing of manly, as a breeze | |
| A thing is sweet, if thou shalt behold | ||
| A thing is sweetest, sweet! | ||
| Radius: 5.00 | Anon the fates of a breeze | |
| Phase: 3.59 | Without aught of man, who shalt find thee | |
| A thing may be, sweetness, if my heart | ||
| A thing is sweetest, sweet! | ||
| A bird is everlasting | ||
| Radius: 6.25 | Without aught of him, and whirl’d | |
| Phase: 4.49 | Like goodness, if thou knowest it, and the sun | |
| A thing is sweet, sweetest, sweet is | ||
| A thing is sweetness, sweet! | ||
| A bird is everlasting | ||
| And unto the frolic tide | ||
| Radius: 7.50 | Like goodness, if I knowest, and a tear of | |
| Phase: 5.39 | A thing is still, sweetest, sweet, I know | |
| A thing is sweet, sweetness! | ||
| A thing is sweetest light | ||
| And o’er its waters | ||
| And from the muteous trod | ||
| Just as a word, and whirled in the air | ||
| Radius: 0.00 | A thing is sweetness, sweet and light | |
| Phase: 0.00 |
These poems (“variational sestinoid spirals”) are part of a series generated with a “variational autoencoder,” a type of machine learning model that learns to encode its inputs to a fixed-length vector in a latent space. The variational autoencoder can then generate new data that resembles its training data by selecting points at random in that latent space. (Nearby points in that space will generate similar output.) The program that produces variational sestinoid spirals first selects a point in the model’s latent space at random, and then decodes the poem’s opening line of text from that point. Subsequent stanzas are generated from points drawn in concentric circles surrounding that initial point. Each stanza's circle has one more point than the last, and its radius in latent space is correspondingly larger. The model was trained on a corpus of one million lines of public domain poetry, sourced from Project Gutenberg.