Poetry is a big deal to me. I’ve read classic poetry, poetry from the 18th and 19th centuries, modern poetry sold in big bookstores, experimental poetry published by indie companies. Recently, I’ve found another type of poetry: Twitter poetry. There is a subgroup of the Twitter universe dedicated to creating characters and tweeting bits of poetry from the persona of those characters. (Re: @Lanesbrew, @onlywreckage, @incharmuese, @sosadtoday, etc.) Since finding and immersing myself into this group, I’ve spent a lot of time wondering just what to make of Twitter poetry. Should the posts found on social media be used simply as an introduction, a taste, to “real” poetry, or are these writings examples of the actual thing - are the Tweets themselves very real poetry worthy of documenting and analyzing?

Published author of four poetry collections, Melissa Broder, created the persona “So Sad Today” (@sosadtoday) on Twitter. Her persona explored the worlds of mental illness, sex, death, spirituality, and American culture through the format of tweets. So Sad Today was anonymous in the beginning, yet the account’s lines of poetry reached thousands, currently hosting 382,000 followers. I’ve followed both the So Sad Today and the personal Melissa Broder accounts before the anonymity was lifted and I was not surprised when Broder claimed the persona as her work. Like in so many traditional works of poetry, there are little snippets of the writer in all of So Sad Today’s tweets.

Broder now has a collection of essays out entitled So Sad Today, and it reads much like an extended study on the topics introduced by her Twitter page. When you get down to it, there are many comparisons between a book and poetry-filled Twitter page. I would even compare Broder’s experiment with a persona to the more used practice of adopting a pen name. Broder uses her character to write lines of poetry, mostly free form, in the most unpeeled way possible: on the always live and always evolving world wide web. There are upsides and downsides to writing your poetry on Twitter. Twitter allows writers to publish immediately and with absolute freedom. It also allows interactivity with readers in a more immediate and personal way than paper books provide. The 140 character limit, however, means that your poetry must either be concise or not as developed as it could be within the pages of a book, blog post, or essay. It is also very easy to convolute your poetry with your personal posts on Twitter if you don’t use a persona or if you personally respond to readers via your poetry page.

Recognizing these ups and downs, the world of Twitter poetry seems to have the makings of a world we could seriously study, at least on our own time. Every topic of study can now be advanced by the internet and social media. Art, political views, and history are easily and prolifically shared on the internet, so why shouldn't 140 character poetry be worthy of our time too? This form of writing could be the key to reaching those who admit to not "getting" poetry and those who don't feel a sense of belonging to the world of writing. The accessibility of a Twitter page will give people the chance to engage with poetry in a way not explored before. It will be interesting if this form develops into a lasting part of the poetry world.