Saturday, April 25, 2009

Brevity

My father-in-law threw his hat into the Twitter ring so I did too. He's basically the trendsetter in our family. I figure if he can do it, I can do it. Although this has not been the case with making sausage from scratch, doing continental philosophy, and reading Korean.

Once I found out there's this whole Twitter conversation going on that I didn't know about before, I felt left out. So now I Tweet. It's like way easier to think in Tweets than blogs. Me bored from books now 2. I don't really understand most of Twitter. I don't know how to Retweet, or respond to someone specific. But I did learn how to post a picture. Since I don't do Sudoku, I figure it's a good way to keep my brain sharp and fend off senility. I understand that Twitter is used to market, network, and find relevant content, which isn't really my scene. But my husband gets a kick out of my tweets and since I don't iron his shirts or pack him a lunch, it's the least I can do.

Some people claim that Twitter shortens your attention span. I've only been Tweeting for a day so it's hard for me to say. What it's already done for me, however, is increase my capacity to enjoy poetry.

From time to time I'll really dig a poem, but as a genre it's not my favorite. It's too concentrated. I know that's the whole point of poetry but I'm at odds with it because I want to know for sure what you're talking about including any crossed out words and deleted stanzas and why you crossed them out. And what you had for dinner. Yesterday and today I've read 9 Horses and The Trouble with Poetry by Billy Collins. I'm totally into it. It's like reading Tweets.

What is striking about Billy Collins is that even though it is poetry--distilled and sparse, he somehow manages to include all the details I'm interested in. Maybe all poems are like that. I was just never patient enough before.

I'm happy that birds
have come into vogue.
Truly, it is a little surprising
because they don't even have hands
or, maybe, that's the appeal?
The part about wings.

Still, this poem is WAY too long for a Tweet. OK, so, I wrote that poem. NOT Billy Collins. Get your own Billy Collins.

12 comments:

  1. I kind of look at Twitter like blogging for slackers, so it's right up my alley.

    Can we put our heads together? I'll teach you how to reply, you teach me how to post a photo (kudos on that, btw, I was impressed) and between the two of us I'm sure we can figure out how to RT.

    Dealio?

    Sweet.

    Tweet.

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  2. I figure I'm not all that interesting as a blogger. And really not as a Twitterer either...but at least its in smaller doses. I'm thoughtful like that.

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  3. Twittering is a big puzzle for me. My life (and blog) are pointless enough as it is. Now I'm supposed to be provide play-by-play snippets of boringness all day long?

    Am I supposed to twittering bon mots like "my lean cuisine is taking forever in the microwave"

    "my kids are bugging me"

    "I forgot to go to my relief society meeting tonight"

    I mean, I don't want to hear this stuff and it's my own life. Why would anybody else?

    And how is it used for marketing? This is one bandwagon that is perplexing me.

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  4. I kind of really really really love that poem.

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  5. Love your poem- Lots!
    Thanks!!!

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  6. I get that Jim's a trend setter. Even though I grew up in Provo, I didn't get into BYU football until watching a Penn State game with him. Wow.
    I wouldn't call me a cougar fan, but I sure did enjoy watching them...

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  7. Nice poem.

    Maybe you could blog about what it means, the uses of figurative language, a comparison to e.e.cummings, ad infinitum.

    See what you've launched?

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  8. et tu, brute?

    more poems, please!

    How about twittering one line of a poem every few hours, so at the end of the day you have a complete poem?

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  9. All right! A sophisticated type* to tweet with. Twitter has a niche, albeit for me it's a narrow one, but it's a niche nevertheless (and alwaysthemore). Most people seem to beat it to within an inch of its life, but as with most everything I do, I just like to dabble in it enough to make some ripples.

    *-sophisticated, in terms of in relation to the general Twitter unintelligentsia.

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  10. Okay, so I feel bad. I wrote that unrequited comment while I was hungry. I'm getting a touch of the hypoglycemia in my dotage. It's no excuse, I know. Speaking of sugar, I was going to send you a present this weekend. A cookie present. Because I am assuming you love sugar cookies (with the frosting and the sprinkles) just as much as I do. After all, we are both Irish (can't shop at Ikea) and both find doing stuff distasteful, so the cookies are a foregone conclusion. And after you've tasted them, if you don't think they are the BEST, most awesomely delicious cookies ever, please don't tell me about it. I am kind of prideful of my sugar cookies. There. That was all I wanted to say.

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  11. I love cookies. And also beef jerky.

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  12. "I Tweet, therefore I am!"

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