In an effort to have quality poetry inbreak on the daily consciousness of those who would welcome it, I have finally followed through on delivering poems to people via SMS, using twitter. If you want short poems delivered to your mobile phone, please subscribe here.
Twitter is a free service and most mobile phone companies do not charge you to receive text messages. I might not need to shout “FREE POEMS!” but I might as well. Also, if you start twittering poems, please let me know, so I can follow you.
Using SMS text messages to convey poetry, or poetic lines, has inherent constraints (140 characters, no line breaks, ect.). Particularly because I love the long poem, I am not suggesting that SMS poems will replace poetry. Instead, this form offers people a chance to have tiny pieces of art engage them unexpectedly in their day. Like all art, sometime my poems will be read, sometimes not; sometimes they will resonate, sometimes they won’t. Regardless, they exists as potential and possibility.
Since twitter is more than 5 minutes old, I know I am not the first person to imagine this application of the technology. However, I have yet to find any community formed around the idea of poets sharing lines of their work with one another. For myself, I would welcome having a few high quality writers inviting me to pause from the daily routine by sending beautiful words to my phone.
I respect some of the reservations that some people, like Robert Peake, have about technology and poetry. However, I am not looking to replace poetry with Poetry 2.0. Said again, this experiment is simply an augmentation of poetry and an invitation to pause. The power of SMS poems does not lie in the fact that they become instant or commodified, but rather that people encounter poems within their pattern of their day. This idea is not much different from putting poetry on buses or beautiful graffiti art on someone’s walk to work. The difference SMS poems offer is choice to read or not read.
So, here are my self-imposed guidelines for using twitter for poetry:
- Each SMS poem will be treated as a self contained unit. Preceding poems are not required for context.
- I will offer myself up in language. I will strive for beautiful words and for reflective utterances, not simply inconsistent ephemera
- I will offer an sms poem about once a day
- I may include lines from larger works in sms poems. I may also incorporate sms lines in larger works.
Look forward to my lines. I look forward to yours.
L
On the topic of Poetry and SMS, Paul Muldoon’s most recent book, /Horse Latitudes/, has a long sequence called “90 Instant Messages To Tom Moore.” I’m all for finding creative force in limitation (160 characters being one kind of limitation; 5-7-5 syllables being another). For some reason, though, this kind of thing hasn’t done it for me yet. Maybe I’m just not in a very poetic mood when I’m surfing the web or clocking tweets.
Hi Robert!
What a pleasure to have you comment after referring to you. Thanks. I also experience what you term a “poetic mood”–when I’m into engaging with poetry and when I am not. I don’t think SMS poetry will ever properly serve that craving, because the poetry lacks the cohesion, flow, and thought that longer works have.
Although I have my guidelines, the ability to edit or trouble over and rework SMS lines is simply not possible. When in the poetic mood, I go for the goods: published poetry, reading events with quality participants, classics. I wouldn’t be scrolling webpages. However, I do see a space for SMS poems.
Taking SMS poetry as a force unto itself, speaking only of when it is delivered to someone’s mobile phone as they are on the go, the work could/should on a quality somewhere between ephemera and fragments/kernels of beauty. I see SMS poems as helping to encourage the poetic mood rather than fulfill it. These tiny works are a means not an end. You’ll have to find the proper end for yourself, maybe a few good SMS poets might help encourage you.
I suppose this idea does run counter to the instant form of communication that SMS is. Using something instant to direct people towards something else–something that asks for patient engagement.
Cheers!
L
There is also just something about ink on paper. Maybe the Kindle will divest me of my dead tree fetish. But for now, I must say, there’s nothing like leafing through a new good book of poems.
I completely agree. I don’t think we’ve found a useful replacement for the book yet. I have little hope for the Kindle; I can’t envision myself relating to it in the same way that I do with books.
There’s a good article in the February 2008 issue of Harper’s Magazine called “Staying awake: Notes on the alleged decline of reading” by Ursula K. Le Guin, which touches briefly on how readers relate and use books (as physical objects). Because books are portable, unique objects, they won’t be too quickly replaced by technology.
Latest words, Orgin, beginnings of hope, restoration, realization thereof.
My co-locative proclamations precisely!
w-w-w-ho is stu-u-u-tuttering, and w-w-w-hat is enough?
emberacement too many gifts to now what to do with
hostile, painful, to see one lost/ far away from created to be/ being what the world has made// effortless is critique, mind the wieght/ armor, even fabric, is a heavy load to bear
I look with eyes averted hoping some goodness shall inspire/
as of late seeing only self-reflection I am disgusted with the mirror/
vanity keeps from experiencing faith, truth/
without beauy we are lost forever searching empty spaces.
Please define postmodernism/ in twenty words or less/ I can’t believe, why/ so many are offended
Here’s my sly answer:
“Postmodernism is both a reaction to, and continuation of, modernism.”
That is only 10 words, but I’m sure they will cause reaction in some folk.
My friend Dan R., who did a MA on postmodern theology, frustratingly defined it like this:
“Trying to define postmodernism means that you don’t have the first clue about what it is.”
I’m not being fair, of course, with my definitions. Postmodernism embraces play, pop-culture, multiplicity of meaning/interpretation . . .
Does that help at all? Are you asking about postmodernism in relation to Twitter poems or in relation to my recent post on Coloring Book?
How coloquial of you, considering common folk, is there any corrolation between premoniton and postmodernism?
Helpful yes, reaction to and continuation of–
the rest of words/ fill up space
Coloring Book is new to me, worthy of investigation?
Or, just kindness/ mis-read
who is you audience/ are they taking the hits/
deserving not/ grace still comes/
meritant(e) / meritoire
annie, audience unknown and unsought (currently). should be more diligent. should should should. save the world but lose the soul–my current risk.
a good that is not my good is no good
I confer–
lose the soul/ my current risk
mixed-up termininology/ abstract notions/
about thine self /in relationship with/
your maker is not outside of reach/
only beyond grasping– touch, release…
we wait for the still small voice to speak
crushed by/ silences bring a multitude of sin
Fierce, I thought audience at present/ was irrelivant, and hatred/ a mighty stance, worthy I pray/ liguistic significane
linguistic significance
i just googled “poets on twitter” and this page was at the top of the list. This is exactly what I am looking for – little snippets of beauty and insight to lace through my day. Thank you!
I would hate to be the one with/ wondering what without is like/ death necesary, inevitable/ mamals live on land
oxymoron, tough to do, geting down while standing on high–
grace be with him, who knows not what he is fighting against, and peace be with you, who attempt to discern
I should have said earth, in reference to mamals, and have since been corrected by wittnesing whales. They are creatues who by nature must choose to breath and do so even in sleep by the force thereof. What an incredible speicies, I know many humans who if they could would stop the life force by negating choice. Action and deed is an expression, the state of the soul is a burden to bear.
not my mothers poetry/ disturbing/ denial, fraction, definition/ meaning absence
My twitter stream is my only poetry blog, and I stream only poetry. Here’s one poem:
For you I wish that these poems were rubies,
borne by my own caravan from Xi’an out of Shaanxi, through Persia, along the northern Silk Road.
Genius physical, mental and emotional achievmment, does this mean that we should not expect poetry in the future, or, are the un-shared versus part of the program?
Get off your ass and write some more poetry. You didn’t post a goddamn thing since June. You’re only alive as your last poem, you lazy and dead mother fucker.
follow nikmaack.
“a chance to have tiny pieces of art engage them unexpectedly in their day”
Delicious!