fallen verses

(via World of Psychology)

Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship

danah m. boyd
School of Information
University of California-Berkeley

Nicole B. Ellison
Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies, and Media
Michigan State University

Abstract

Social network sites (SNSs) are increasingly attracting the attention of academic and industry researchers intrigued by their affordances and reach. This special theme section of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication brings together scholarship on these emergent phenomena. In this introductory article, we describe features of SNSs and propose a comprehensive definition. We then present one perspective on the history of such sites, discussing key changes and developments. After briefly summarizing existing scholarship concerning SNSs, we discuss the articles in this special section and conclude with considerations for future research.

I’m not sure if this makes me a neo-formalist or not, but I’ve been enjoying the forays into formal poetry I’ve been doing recently. Most of them have been for my Poetry Writing class but several of the villanelles have been written just for fun and I had a great, frantic time writing the sestina. More on that later.

So the first goal I have for December, something spanning the whole month, is to go through the book The Making Of A Poem by Mark Strand and Eavan Boland and write a poem in each form in order.

• Villanelle
• Sestina
• Pantoum
• Sonnet
• Ballad
• Blank Verse
• Heroic Couplet
• Stanzaic Poetry
• An Elegy
• A Pastoral
• An Ode

Hmmm… that list is longer than I thought. This may be a goal for December and January.

As I said a few days ago, there is some explanation to go along with Sestina For No One. The last two weeks of my Poetry Writing class, we had to write in a form from a specific list. My villanelle “Just to Live in a Dream…” was for class two weeks ago, and I couldn’t continue with the villanelle thing, I had to write in a different form. Mr. Rutherglen just had to say that the villanelle was an exceptional challenge so… I wrote one. Then, just to take things up a notch, he said that if the villanelle was hard, the sestina was super-extra hard. I love a challenge. To quote (perhaps more accurately, misquote): The most hardcore version of the sestina is to take six nouns as the words you repeat. This was not good enough. I took six words from a random word generator as the basis for my sestina. MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA! It was an insane level of mania and focus just struggling to get from one word to the next and have it make some kind of sense. FOR 39 LINES! Most of my work is vastly shorter than that. I don’t know what I was thinking, thinking that was a good idea. I am, on the whole, fairly pleased with it. It’s undergoing revision: it came back with the comment one line was R-Kelly-esque. I’m not sure what that is but it doesn’t seem complimentary.

I have to do a whole bunch of revision in the next couple of weeks. The final portfolio for class has to include four revised works. I’ve never been big on the revision process but it may be that it is time to get into revising. Ah well.

Go read about the Virgina Quarterly Review’s angry letters (hat tip to Poetic Asides)

Totally Optional Animals

This week, Tiel suggested we write about animals. For the most part, I have no real interest in any animal but people, and precious few of those. So, here’s my totally optional poem about those totally optional animals. Other Totally Optional Artists have shared their poems here.

Hunting

if i should call you
the one that got away
it is as if i am calling you
a frightened doe in the woods
and as if i am calling me
a hunter with loincloth and spear

i hungered for the primal you
the sight of your flanks quivering
shivering in chill forest winds
your soft pelt spread-eagled
and ready to be warming

if i stalk you
from the downwind side
will you sense my presence
as always
your head darting
to the empty space i
will soon fill

my knife to never
again part
your flesh
you run
from
an
other
now

Food (of sorts)

Jillypoet left us this week with the instruction to “cook up a poem.” Prompt #2 at ReadWritePoem was to write about food. I may have stretched that idea a bit. If you’re interested in reading other poems about food, be sure to check out ReadWritePoem this week. Next week, we’ll be writing about pieces.

My Green Fairy

In memory, I can float you on the back of spoon.
The metaphor should be obvious,
I always loved you mixed with six parts water.
Flying to a fantasy land was not a hallucination,
not just. It was a whole reality like Neverland
but I couldn’t hear the crocodile ticking
until the alarm was going off.
I would have fenced all the guards of Venice for you
and I thought I got off light
when all you wanted was a sugar cube.
Trick was, the cube needed to sweeten you
is larger the known universe.
Not even my ego makes up the difference.
It’s a bitter swallow, failure, and proof the mix isn’t right.

 I watch very little television, so this may be old, old news, but I just saw a commercial for the movie of SWEENEY TODD being done by Tim Burton. This should be awesome!

Edit: I am very much unhappy with wordpress right now… they won’t let me post a flash animation. :(

Explanation to come, for now, enjoy.

Sestina For No One

Though Neruda wrote to a different girl,
The line is true: I like you when you are silent.
Without words I can pretend we are more exotic,
From somewhere they still believe in magic.
As if you were an ornate lamp, an impulse
Purchase, a good deal, just the right color

For the room. Yours was not the color
of ephemera or dream, but that of a girl
I saw one day and on impulse
Set aside my tendency to stay silent.
It seems at times there is a magic
taking these plain lines to some exotic

Locale and flavoring them, these non-exotic
Words. Adding to this black ink the color,
A pastel maybe, or a jewel tone, of magic.
But I build us out of plain words: Girl
Boy, Kiss, and if we both stood silent
There would be no giving in, no impulse

To be swayed by, no ground for the impulse
To drive into. No matter the exotic
Fantasies, I would not have you stay silent.
I will take you in any color,
Even the gold of Midwest grains. Girl,
We should know enough of magic

By now to love the simple magic
Of the everyday, the mundane, the impulse
Just to be with one another, boy and girl.
Because the taste of a kiss is exotic
Enough. So I write about the color
Of your eyes, how you can’t stay silent

At the movie theater, how you stay silent
When I read these poems like it is a magic
Act: all tricks and distracting bits of color.
The mystery of the far away is a strong impulse
But all those lines of fantasy and exotic
Dreams pale when compared to you, girl.

I follow the impulse, and I like you when you are silent.
Yet every whisper is exotic, every play of color
Is magic. I do not like, but love, when you speak, girl.

 And it was billed as a Poetry Slam.  It was a bit overbilled: no twinkies for the prize, no raucous drunk crowd of judges, no whooping or hollering or booing or snapping or feminine hissing or masculine grunting, or, in fact, much of anything at all.  Four poets mumbling: cliches of Minnesota, religion, bipolar disorder, and sexual assault (that rhymed) and one poet rocking the house with an amusing piece about ice cream.  Doesn’t everyone love ice cream?  I wonder, as I read more poetry, if I am a poetry snob.  That I know about such poets as Cristin O’keefe Aptowitz, Taylor Mali, Patricia Smith, etc, am I ruined for truly amateur regional poetry?  Am I just too familiar with the best of the spoken poetry world or am I too judgmental, too critical, too… me.

As a note, I did not compete.  But, judging from that crowds response, it would not likely have been well-received had I.

Alright. As it turns out, two days away from the blog, and now, many many posts all at once. <shrug> I’ve done a bit of redesigning of the blog, switched to a new theme, cleaned up the sidebar a tad bit. I hope everyones browsing experiencing is made a little bit more enjoyable. I have also used that experience as impetus for my inaugural Read Write Poem prompt poem. The prompt was to write an American Sentence, a la Ginsberg. So far it looks like almost 50 people have. By which I mean there are almost 50 comments as I write this, not having looked and /or counted, I don’t know how many of those are unique individuals, how many people posted more than once, how many posts are comments and not poems, etc., etc., ramble. The prompt for next week is by Jill who wants to torment us with yummy goodness and poems about food. read write prompt #2: eat, drink, write a poem
And so, with as little ado as possible, an American Sentence*

playing with style sheets is not quite as much fun as playing between sheets

*Though it occurs to me, any sentence I write is American**, but the relation to 17 syllables is a bit iffier; however, I am a big fan of compounding - gotta love those colons and semi-colons and comma and conjunctions but hate the splice!

**It also occurs to me it would be really cool to call American Sentences whatever the equivalent would be in Japanese.  I don’t remember enough to think of it off the top of my head.  And Dave is right: “Memo to Ginsberg: /writing haiku in three lines /IS American.”  But in quoting him in one line have I destroyed the message????  Oh, the insanity!

and I was struck by this Twitter post.

 Twitter wanted me to update. Twitter cares about me & what is happening in my life. I’m doing nothing, btw, that adds any value to living.

Goldmourn likes the Twitter.  I sometimes remember its existence.  But that <imagine an arrow pointing upwards> seems to me a perfect encapsulation of the increasing dehumanization of social contact brought on by increasing reliance on technological media.  Not that I’m any sort of luddite, I’m just waiting for the virtual shrink to come to fruition.  One step closer and I for one welcome our new virtual overlords.

I stopped by walmart after work today to pick up a coupe of things, and just inside the store is the men’s clothing.  Facing the aisle was a t-shirt with the text: “Your mom is in college”
Can anyone explain this to me?  Is this intended to be flashed at infants or other small children who have mothers finishing college degrees?  Is this intended to be flashed at high school students whose mom’s have gone back to college so they can have a career outside the home?  Is this just a really, really bad insult reflecting the current trend in mainstream America to devalue education and promote ignorance??  Anyone???