In 140 Characters Is There Room for Poetry and Narrative?

Posted on 06 November 2009

Sub-title: If on a summer’s night a tweeter.

Unessential words and motions is what Twitter is all about. With the growth of spammers and sex scammers Twitter grows less interesting by the day. But what if there were ART in them there tweets? What if something within 140 characters could evoke emotion, passion, story, song?

I have experimented in the poetic/electronic form wondering what Flash might bring to poetry that the written page could not. The “voice” can be heard in rich media. The voice of the poet or writer metering out the phrases, visual representations and letters drifting by as representations and not actual words or sentences.

Now comes a full 140 characters to work with. I have done a Haiku room to Twitter. I have written some one-liners tonight that remind me of the simple pleasure of doing an activity with no goal in mind. What is the value of a tweet? And thus what is the value of a poem? Each fleeting moment captured either in a momentary blip netted in RSS feeds and RTs. But nothing of “value” will become of the poem, much less the tweeted poem.

So why do we write? Why do words stick themselves together in random patterns? If it’s not for marketing or selling would we tweet at all?

I know my answer, but I am afraid the roar of the social media sphere is too loud for you to hear.

So within the quiet space of this moment I give you two momentary glimpses into my life. Nothing to gain from sharing them with you. Only my own fascination at the connection of the words and the images.

I would call you to find a voice within Twitter that has no value beyond beauty. And then give that beauty freely without bounds.

You might get some strange questions. You might get “unfollowed.” You will certainly wonder why you are doing it. But do it nonetheless. As we inject beauty into the world there is more beauty to go around. Why is Twitter any different? Amidst the din of the tweets can be heard the tap of rhythm and meter. And in 140 characters there is a limit much like haiku that can contain the world and the joy and the sorrow and the hope.

I gift you with hope tonight. The hope of 140 characters typed together in a flowing randomness or a lingering calculated thought. What ever it is, I call to you, songsters, tweeters, writers and poets; I invoke you to TWEEEEET something beautiful. I will try if you will try.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/twitter-poems

My two moments in 14o c.

The scorched earth smells like a musty old mare in the light rain sprinkling down and cooling the remaining heat of the day…

And a second one with imagined line breaks.

Proud cat brings in mouse/ gladly silent and still/ kids are less worried than the dogs/ and the rain begins outside/ and it is quiet again.