In 140 Characters Is There Room for Poetry and Narrative?

Posted on 6 November 2009 | 2 responses

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.

The Inner Game of Tennis – Timothy Gallwey Returns with More Wisdom

Posted on 7 August 2009 | No responses

When the Inner Game of Tennis was published in 1972 I was 10. I am sure my father bought it, I think he was still playing tennis at the time. A couple of years later I must’ve picked up The Inner Game of Tennis the summer I went to tennis camp when I was 13. Notice the cover, tennis balls were still white. I was playing with a Wilson T-2000 just like Jimmy Connors.

What I didn’t know at the time, when trying to read and decipher Gallwey’s book at 13 years-old, was that Gallwey’s book was a spiritual book. A book that taught more than court tactics but it also talk life tactics and concentration tactics.

In 7th grade I was playing tennis at the height of my abilities. My school won the district tennis tournament (that was as high as things went back then) and the #1 player, Cisco Hobbs,  and I got to come home early and play the finals the next day while our peers were still in class.

It was kinda cool. And also a bummer. We would’ve had an audience at the tournament. This way it was just him and me and the coach. I can still remember my mom driving me to the match. I was working through all the ideas I could to get ready for the match. I remember as we warmed up trying to focus on the patterns that the ball stripes made as it was coming over the net at me. (A Gallwey exercise) During the match, at some critical moments, when things could’ve gone either way, I remember returning to that exercise. Trying to focus on the patterns of the spinning ball. I still use this “focus” exercise all the time.

A couple days ago I got an opportunity to propose a social media marketing plan for Tim Gallwey on his new book The Inner Game of Stress, coming out in a few weeks. The outcome of the game/proposal is not important. What is amazing is two days earlier I had been re-reading the “The Inner Game.”

I won.

I’m adding Timothy Gallwey to the Visionaries link and welcoming his teaching back into my life.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/InnerTennis

Check out the Inner Game of Stress site, put up by a dear friend of mine who also put me on the trail of potentially doing some work to promote Gallwey’s new book.

Inspiration: A Man Among Wolves [National Geographic Documentary]

Posted on 19 June 2009 | No responses

Maverick researcher Shaun Ellis raises abandoned wolf cubs and teaches them, by example, how to survive in the wild — living and behaving like them, howling, licking and snarling like them, even eating carcass meat like them.

See the National Geographic site on A Man Among Wolves.

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