I heard a story about Twitter on NPR the other day that made me reconsider my past dismissal of the service as a self-indulgent waste of time.  For the most part, the story was a basic introduction to the idea of nano-blogging to and from a variety of electronic devices and how that might be an interesting, fun, and perhaps even useful activity.  It described the Twitter map , which sails around the globe giving glimpses into different “tweets”.  These meanderings create sort of a post-modern performance art vibe.  When “Larsk in Illinois” mused “Somebody called me a renaissance man the other day and it just sunk in” or “Blanca in Virginia” told the world “they finally got me my own trash can.  Finally I can throw stuff away” I don’t think they were necessarily attempting poetry or even introspection, but the effect of multiple random thoughts creates that kind of creative collage, like those stories you write in a group where everyone adds a line and then it’s mushed together into one cohesive whole.  It’s sort of fascinating.  Maybe excessive online mundanity has inadvertantly reinvigorated the art of poetry.  As the NPR story also pointed out, its limited character format is an ideal context for haiku…

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