Is Tweeting Making Us Poets or Morons?

I recently joined the growing world of tweeting on Twitter, and I have been posting status updates in 140 characters, often failing to update because I have writtern in 141 or more characters. While content may sound like what telegrams used to, or like some text messages, the sizing down or up of the text sometimes requires poetic skills. You find yourself seeking the precise word, a metaphor, or beautiful, but concise, or even messy, phrase that fits within the character limit.

Twitter describes itself as "a free service that lets you keep in touch with people through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?"

These short broadcasts are similar to Facebook Status updates, where you may just post something about yourself, a frustration you have or what you are doing; some type of speaking to yourself, which to some may appear moronic, but in the world of constant status updates, when things like, "OMG, I'm an idiot!" are put on Twitter or FB for public viewing (that is, if anyone pays attention), the line between poetry, self-paparazzi, annoyance, and profound monologues is thinning. Collectively, these tweets and FB updates are a meddle of voices full of sound and fury, and this time they signify something. Quite revealing sometimes.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Abuja Writers' Forum Call for Submissions

Wordsbody has announced the following call for submissions: CAVALCADE literary journal, devoted to publishing original stories, poems,one-act plays, reviews, critical essays and art from an African perspective,will debut in October 2008 with a special edition. The tri-annual journal, a project of the Abuja Writers' Forum (AWF), is now seeking submissions for the second and third editions. Deadline: October 30, 2008 See more details here: Contribute to Cavalcade.
Read more

Roland Mhasvi's Flowers

Image
This is the cover of my copy of Roland Masvi's Flowers of Yesterday, a collection I reviewed in 1996 for The Herald. I was going through my old stuff when I saw this book in my old collection.  As I was flipping through the pages, I saw the cut-out for the original review, which in part reads: "This is a collection of highly esoteric poetry..., which can be charged of what Afrocentric scholars have described as 'piles of esoterica and ostentatious erudition'... The language is to the ordinary reader opaque, the imagery is inaccessible and the symbolism is surprisingly unusual but invitingly novel...real food for scholars."   The review just reminds me of the Chinweizu days, when we, as university students, had rediscovered African literature and its theory. Talking about Afrocentricity had a certain appeal, and we were looking at a lot of writing through the lenses of this newly-discovered Afrocentricity. Looking back, perhaps there was more in Mhasvi's poe
Read more

FREEDOM, a poem on South Africa by Afzal Moolla

Freedom The shackles have been cast off. Chains broken. People once squashed, under the jackboot of Apartheid, are free. Free at last! Freedom came on the 27th day in that April, 1994. Freedom from prejudice. From institutionalised racism. From being relegated to second-class citizenship. Freedom came and we danced. We cried. We ululated as we elected our revered Mandela. President Nelson Mandela. Our very own beloved 'Madiba'. Black and white and brown and those in-between, All hues of this rainbow nation, rejoiced as we breathed in the air of freedom and democracy. Today we pause. We remember. We salute. The brave ones whose sacrifices made this day possible, on that 27th day of April, 18 years ago. Today we dance. We sing. We ululate. We cry. Tears of joy and tears of loss. Of remembrance and of forgiveness. Of reconciliation and of memories. Today we pause. We acknowledge the tasks ahead. The hungry. The naked. The destitut
Read more