Poetry and Social Media

[rowens]

So you want to make Poetry Great Again?

[alonso ramoran]

I want to MPGA. I can start crowdfunding for hats and whatnot.

[rowens]

Well people just have to write good poetry. They never needed Social Media before. It's out there. It's there. And if you got it in you, you can write it. . . . Two guys talking, what a horrible thing.

---

Back and forth.

[alonso ramoran]

Two guys talking... an absolutely horribly horrible thingy thing...
Forth and back.

Seriously though I don’t have much else to say unless someone else contributes to the convo. Other than that it’s past bedtime. Mother says.

[rowens]

Whelp. I've done all I can do. All I can do to show you, not tell you now, but show you, that poetry is not and also is for everybody. Depending on their availability.

[billy]

the thing of it is this. while some are well read re poetry many are not and all they know of is the hall mark poetry they've read on xmas and birthday cards. and that's fine, vanity sites full of these people are fine. someone said our site is part of social media and i have to agree. what i don't agree with is that good poetry is as easy to find on social media [apart from googling specific poets] as it is to find shite poetry. many people who write poetry on social media have no idea what a good poet or poem is simply because they're not well read enough. hallmarkism is all they know, cliche-ism is all they know, there's nothing wrong with that, they probably write to the best of their abilities. the the real problem is that they want to improve on how to write poetry. they already think they're the greatest poets ever. their families and friends say oooh and arrrr that's great and they believe it. for every site like this there's a thousand or two "i'm the greatest poet alive sites" these people "poets" abound in much greater numbers than the ones who wish to improve what and how they write. this is the reason why facebook twitter and other places including other poetry sites abound in relation to sites like ours. ego is a big thing and when connected to poetry is insidious.

[rowens]

If you look up videos of poetry related things, new poetry or discussions of well-known poetry, they have them all the time. They always have a lot of people in the audience. They're usually nowhere near where I am, but maybe other people live in areas closer to such things. My only idea is that it's not the medium, because there would be poetry if people wanted it, but people don't want it. Kind of like common decency or fairness you don't find those things easily either.

[alonso ramoran]

billy,
This is exactly what I’ve been trying to get at. But I was also thinking about how this is an issue and how it could be solved by using the same social media sites that promote a poet’s wrongful egotism. Then again which one of those social media sites don’t promote a sort of egotism already? Anyways, apparently there’s completely no way, no different approach, to take towards using sites like Twitter and Instagram to make good poetry more accessible.

rowens,
I get that if you want good poetry you have to look for it. What would it take for good poetry to reach a wider audience?

[rowens]

A better audience.

[alonso ramoran]

Agreed. What would a better audience mean?

[rowens]

If I knew that I wouldn't have anything to complain about. That's what makes poetry, or at least the serious poetry you're talking about, so hard to place here or there. People come to poetry. Music pulls people in. I guess poetry is like a commitment you have to make. You can appreciate poems here and there. But to be into poetry is like being into philosophy. It involves an engagement. And I can go on and on forever, I have nothing more important to do.

[alonso ramoran]

No, I think that's a good note to end on. I can see where you're coming from.

[billy]

the reason you don't get good poets putting a lot of their stuff on facebook is or could be because they don't want to be associated with vanity poetry, what do see good poets doing is linking to their own sites. sadly ego poets will never click on the link. nore will those who just sau great and love it.

billy,
This is exactly what I’ve been trying to get at. But I was also thinking about how this is an issue and how it could be solved by using the same social media sites that promote a poet’s wrongful egotism. Then again which one of those social media sites don’t promote a sort of egotism already? Anyways, apparently there’s completely no way, no different approach, to take towards using sites like Twitter and Instagram to make good poetry more accessible.

rowens,
I get that if you want good poetry you have to look for it. What would it take for good poetry to reach a wider audience?

[alonso ramoran]

I think those poets shouldn't care about what they could be associated with and let the art speak for itself. Vanity poetry is what it is, and if what the poet is posting is different from the style of vanity poetry that's getting the likes, people will recognize it. It's not hard to differentiate the types.

Those who are not willing to check out the links to a poet's site, and a possibly good poet at that, is all the more reason why those poets should embrace the interface of social media sites like Twitter and Instagram and just have fun with it.

[NobodyNothing]

I suspect that all laboring poets have from time to time been borderline envious, if not a few steps beyond, at the ability of music to viscerally engage the listener on an immediate and personal level by whatever it possesses to do so.

Just a thought that popped into my mind reading this thread.