https://fredner.org/feed.xml 2026-06-19T00:00:00-07:00 Erik Fredner https://fredner.org/blog/darmstadt.html 2026-06-19T00:00:00-07:00 2026-06-19T00:00:00-07:00

Presenting new research on canons within canons.

<p>I will be presenting new research at the symposium <a href="https://www.linglit.tu-darmstadt.de/institutlinglit/mitarbeitende/brottrager/mapping_the_canon/index.en.jsp">“Mapping the Canon: Quantitative Approaches to Literary History”</a> at the Technische Universität Darmstadt on June 19, 2026.</p> <p>The essay is provisionally titled “Canons within Canons?: US literature anthology selections across series.” You can <a href="https://fredner.org/mapping-canon">view my slides here</a>.</p> https://fredner.org/blog/anki-cloze.html 2026-04-06T12:46:40-04:00 2026-06-01T15:26:08-04:00

A tool to automatically create cloze tests for memorizing poems.

<p>I often challenge my students to memorize poems. And I have long found <a href="https://apps.ankiweb.net/">Anki</a> to be the most effective tool for memorizing information. However, using Anki to memorize poetry is tricky because it is time-consuming to make good flashcards by hand.</p> <p>So I created a tool to make good poetry memorization flashcards for Anki. You can find the code at <a href="https://github.com/erikfredner/anki-poems">this repository</a>.</p> <p>This will automatically generate cards that treat each word of the poem as a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloze_test">cloze test</a>. Each card shows the test within the context of thirteen lines of the poem (a number chosen so that it would work well on phones, but also because <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteen_Ways_of_Looking_at_a_Blackbird">thirteen is a good number</a>).</p> <p>You can make cards directly from <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/">Poetry Foundation</a> URLs, or you can make custom cards. <a href="https://github.com/erikfredner/anki-poems/blob/main/README.md">See the README</a> for details.</p>