Is 140 the new 5-7-5? Writing, haiku, and Twitter

Photo:ほたるかな by ionushi

When was the last time you wrote a poem? If you use Twitter, you might be a poet, and you don't even know it.

With Twitter, the public messaging service which limits responses to its question "What are you doing?" to 140 characters, found poems, mostly unintentional, bob in its sea of second-by-second updates.

Structure defines different types of poetry. Sonnets have fourteen lines, and villanelles have nineteen, each with different rhyme schemes. Haiku have three lines, each following a 5-7-5 syllable pattern.

After looking in a book of haiku and counting characters (including spaces between words) in a few, I've found that haiku can fit in the Twitter 140-characters format.

Blogville's resident Servant of Chaos Gavin first introduced me to Twitter by inviting me to join a TwitterPoetry account he set up. It's turned into a continually forming epic poem, written anonymously by those who log in, and each line is 140 characters or less. (If you're interested in joining, drop a comment and I'll forward you the log-in info.)

More poetic musings exists in Twitterland.

Some of the sharpest Twitters (a.k.a. "tweets") I receive are from a cat named Sockington. His Zen feline observations, typed by his owner, fit so well with this format. Some of my favorites:

- Sleeping with my little legs tucked under my head, tongue slightly out
- How am I ever going to learn to write if you won't let me take the pen?
- Does this whole thing make me Cat 2.0?
- Calculated deterministic probability of alternative fuel sourcing... j/k meow

Another Twitterer who excels in one-liner communication is Fake Steven Wright:

- I'd kill for a Nobel Peace Prize.
- I'm addicted to placebos. I could quit but it wouldn't matter.
- In school they told me "practice makes perfect." Then they told me "nobody's perfect." So then I stopped practicing.

It takes practice and skill to write something memorable and brief. A thought has to be completely distilled to make an impact or it's ignored. Fluff blows away on the digital breeze; the diamonds stay.

As I Twitter, I'll continue to grind my one-liners, and I'll soon throw in a haiku. After discounting Twitter as one more needless distraction in my media-saturated life, I've come to see its usefulness as an occasional, community-based writing exercise.

Though poets often write about the small moments of everyday life, I'm still not convinced that anyone needs to know that I just took my laundry out of the dryer (one of my first silly "tweets"). I do like the idea of sharing wit and poetry with others, however. My Twitter address is here, if you're interested.

Image above is of "Yosa Buson, great painter, poet and calligrapher, by himself. The haiku says, more or less:
Hours of study..
a firefly coming out
of buttocks?"

Bonus links:
• This blog found me as I finished up the draft of this post. (Serious B.S.P. — thanks, Sharon!)
TwitterKu — unintentional poetry pulled from the Twitter Public Stream

• In honor of Sockington:
Mr. Lee Cat Cam

Comments

[Crafty Green Poet]

Fun and interesting post. I love the twitters by the cat!

[KG]

Crafty Green Poet — Thanks! Sockington is a Twitter genius, IMHO.

[Paris Parfait]

Interesting perspective; I have avoided Twitter as it seems too time-consuming and I'm always pressed for time. But I can see it has its amusing moments, i.e. the cat's "poems."

[KG]

Paris Parfait — I think you're right to avoid Twitter. I was constantly Twittering when I first started, until I realized I really didn't have the time either. It was always on my mind --- I'd wonder, "What's everybody doing?!?!?" and then I'd have to go check.

I couldn't keep that pace. I've curtailed it back a lot; I send out a relevant tweet once every 1-3 days. If I go for a few more days without, it's fine. I use it now mainly for announcing something interesting and then include the URL for people to click on.

I've seen that it's good for long lay-overs in airports. People really go tweet-crazy then. ;)

[gautami]

Very informative and interesting. I never heard of twitters. Thanks!

[KG]

gautami — You're welcome! Though a slight warning: it's very addictive (and often fun).

[Eric]

I'm not sure what it is... as much as I love structure I've never been able to get into poetry much.

I think it may have to do with the obsession of structure/form over the function of communication or telling a story in a lot of cases.

Then again it could just be that I see poetry as being too similar to song lyrics, without the music.

Something is missing for me, and I just don't get it. Anyone care to enlighten on what they get out of poems? Not just creating (because creating is always fun) - but what is the end product, and what makes it good? (Not just the cleverness with which it was constructed... I'm talking casual reader benefit -- entertainment.)

[Kristin Gorski (KG)]

Eric — I'm taking your question and opening it up this Thursday to see if anyone participating in Poetry Thursday will share why they like poetry.

In the meantime, check out the site: http://www.poetrythursday.org

[Sharon Sarmiento]

I actually think that Twitter can be an art form, and I love to see the fragmented 140 character pieces of thoughts that float across my Twitter stream.

A friend of mine also described Twitter as an e-hug :-). It's sort of like if you're in one room of your house and you can hear people talking in the other room. Kind of comforting, especially for us folks who are web workers and work from home.

I don't find that it takes up a bunch of time at all, although it's now part of my daily online life. It's excellent for keeping in touch with folks you wouldn't normally be exchanging constant emails or IMs with.

For those who are cautious of Twitter cuz of the addiction factor, rest assured that it passes. :-)

I have been meaning to spend some time on the Twitter Poetry, and you've just given me the inspiration to do it, KG!

[KG]

Sharon — You've got me thinking some new things about Twitter. Post forming now...