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I was prompted to write a poem that could be
sent via Twitter by the NPR program
Tell
Me More. The program was celebrating National Poetry Month with a
segment called “Muses
and Metaphor 2012.” Listeners were being invited to send in poems of
“140 characters or fewer.” Without
too much effort, I wrote a poem. I did so in Microsoft Word because Word
keeps a character count. Unfortunately, Word was not counting spaces,
but Twitter does. Here is the original poem, which was too long:
How can I write a poem in a tweet,
Expressing my thoughts with such brevity?
I can hardly convey an idea that’s complete,
Much less one that warrants longevity.
I then began composing directly in Twitter,
which led to the 138 character poem above. Then I read the
directions for submitting my poem and discovered that I had to include
the hashtag #TMMPoetry. Rather than cut down my poem even more, I
tweeted a link to my blog, where I posted the poem.
Twitter is really not a good place to
publish poetry.
The poem was completed on April 10, 2012.
— LED, 1/24/2013 |
