The poem is a part of my upcoming collection Rumsfeld’s Sandbox and follows the publication of other poems in the collection. Those poems include:

• “Battlefield Confession”
• “Cigar”
• “Life”
• “Love And War”
• “Old Goth”
• “20 Acres”
• “Nocturne: Battlefield Sonnet”
• “The Armor Dims”
• “Carcass”
• “Siege”
• and “I Like War”

You will soon be able to read Rumsfeld’s Sandbox online as a digital book with audio presentations and downloadable .PDF broadsides and chapbooks. The planned publication date is March 19. Savvy readers will know that this is the anniversary date of the Iraq invasion, particularly the air strike on the presidential palace in Iraq.

More information will be published soon regarding Rumsfeld’s Sandbox. Meanwhile, take a peak at “Gunfight In Manhattan“.

Just for the record, I don’t consider this one of my best poems. It has its flaws. But I wrote it as an exercise in a workshop. The assignment was to write a poem in which coffee and potato chips were mentioned within the two minute time limit. Most people, in these kinds of exercises, meet the requirements of the exercise in the first couple of lines. I just started writing to see where I might go and sought the best place to slip potato chips and coffee in without making it look like that’s what I was doing. I managed to pull it off right at the two minute mark.

At any rate, here it is. “Potato Chips And Coffee”:

It’s the kind of poem that some people will read and say is too wordy. But they fail to see the form for what it is. I’m not sure I can describe it adequately. You could call it an epic burlesque and that would be accurate. But I hesitate to use the word “burlesque” as you might get the wrong idea.

At 2,568 words, the poem stands at 524 lines. Not a bad clip, and from beginning to end it reaches to nearly 12-1/2 pages on 8 1/2 X 11. Certainly not a Canterbury Tales and no Homerian apple pie, but a long poem nonetheless.

So What Took So Long?
One may be wondering why it took so long to complete the poem. It’s a good question. I couldn’t tell you how many hours that is in real time. If one asks a pilot how long he’s been flying you might get an answer like “35 years”. Well, we all know that his 35 years didn’t consist of continuous flying. He slept, spent time with the family, golfed, traveled as a passenger a few times, and likely drove a car a number of times as well. He may have only actually put in 10,000 miles hours of flying time over the course of that 35 years.

This is how poems are written. A poet who has been writing for 20 years may spend 10,000 hours of writing time penning hundreds or thousands of short poems or may spend that time writing a few long ones. I guess I’ve done both. But “The Sandbox” is the longest to date.

How I Know It’s Finished
I suppose I could go on revising. It is really easy to find a few imperfections, and the longer the poem the more of those there will be, but this poem says what I needed it to say and says it in all the ways I intended for it to be said – and then some. There were elements that I’d planned and I worked on until I got them right, then there were those I hadn’t thought of that just fell into place. Que sera, sera.

The poem started out – if you saw my first draft you’d say it was a different poem altogether – in a completely different form. It was rather contrived. But I allowed myself to break out of the “planned” version and to just let the poem work itself into what it wanted to be, so to speak. I think that is the best way to go about writing anyhow. But when I did that the poem took off in unexpected directions. Sometimes those new directions were compelling and interesting and other times they were mere distractions. But after countless hours of revising, ruminating, regurgitating, scrapping, taking things out, putting things in, taking back out and putting back in, I’ve finally arrived at a stopping point. The end is here. How do I know?

I’m reasonably sure I can take nothing out and improve it. If I put anything else in I’ll ruin it. The poem says what it needs to say. Nothing more. Everything I wanted in it is in it. What didn’t need to be in it has been removed. Is it perfect? Likely not. But I feel it. I’m satisfied.

To me, the end of the poem is intuitive. I feel it in my gut. It’s done. Now it’s time to start marketing.

If you are familiar with Twitter, kudos to you. If not, allow me to introduce you to the 21st century version of mass communication.

Twitter is an opt-in service that allows you to set up an account and a profile and instant message multiple people who have agreed to receive your messages. The messages, however, have a 140-character limit. Because of this limit, Twitter has been dubbed “microblogging”. It’s a way of sharing information in short snippets. I like Twitter for a number of reasons, one of which is because it forces me to think concisely. Brevity is key to good writing and Twitter forces you to be brief.

What Is A Twitter Poem?
So what is a Twitter poem? In a word, a Twitter poem is a poem that you write for Twitter and publish on Twitter. I have seen Twitter haikus and other poets have used Twitter to write short poems. I’ve even seen people Twitter an entire book.

As I see it, there are two ways you can use Twitter to write a poem. You can write a single poem within one “tweet” – the word for a message on Twitter. Or you can use each message to write a line in a poem. In the latter’s case, your poem can be as long as you want it to be as long as each line is no more than 140 characters. That’s not quite as challenging as writing a 140-character poem.

Keep in mind, we are talking about 140 characters, not words.

My Twitter Poem Experiment
Starting April 1, I will tweet one poem a day for 30 days. Each poem will consist of 140 characters or less. Each poem will exist within one tweet. No more. I will tweet each poem three times and every day throughout April I will publish a new poem. I’d welcome you to follow me, if you have an interest in seeing how this little experiment goes.

All you have to do to follow me is open a Twitter account and look for me at http://twitter.com/Allen_Taylor. My username on Twitter is Allen_Taylor. When you find me just click the Follow button and that’s all there is to it.

If you want to write your own Twitter poems in response I’d like to read them.

How To Write A Twitter Poem
Here are the guidelines that I’ll be using for my Twitter poems. You can write a poem on Twitter any way you like. But I’m using this method as a means of efficiency and so that there is consistency throughout the month. Whenever you see a Twitter poem it will look like this:

• Every line will end with /
• Stanzas will end with a double / – just like this //
• Poems will appear as one line with the above symbols to represent line and stanza breaks
• At the end of each poem you’ll see #twitpoem

That’s about it. Pretty simple. The #twitpoem is called a hashtag. If you go to http://search.twitter.com and type in the hashtag you’ll find all of the poems on one page.

Remember, the Twitter Poem Experiment starts on April 1. I will write one poem per day for 30 days. Each day I will tweet the poem three times. To read, you’ll have to follow me on Twitter. I hope to see you there.

Before I share the poem with you I’d like to tell you what a Twitter poem is or may be. But first, what is Twitter?

Twitter: The Who, What, When, Where, And Why

Twitter, by all accounts, is a social media application that allows multiple people to carry on an extended conversation and various cross-conversations simultaneously. It’s like the party version instant messenger. You can type a message of up to 140 characters (that is the limit, no exceptions) and anyone who is following you can read that message.

It’s really very simple. But there are some complexities that go beyond the mere communication aspect of Twitter. I won’t get into those. Suffice it to say that Twitter is a means of communicating with a mass of people at one time through ultra-short messages.

Before you can follow someone on Twitter, you have to have an account. You simply fill out the application, fill out your 140 character profile and start finding people to follow. But why?

There are likely as man reasons to follow someone as there are people on Twitter. It’s whatever you want to get out of it, but generally people follow people they have an interest in or that typically post messages that are of an interesting nature. I follow several poets and publishers, business people, other Internet marketers, and some famous people I admire. Some of them follow me back. I also have a following of close to 170 people, some of whom I follow back. At present, I have 163 followers and 139 people that I follow.

When you log in to Twitter you see a simple screen with a write box at the top. That’s where you type your messages. Below that, you can see the messages of the people that you follow in an aggregated rollup so that there is no common thread between them. Those followers may or may not be following each other, but it doesn’t matter. They all have one thing in common: You are following them. Here’s a screenshot of my write box and a few messages from the people I am following.

My Twitter Poem – The Method Of My Madness

The method of writing this poem was fairly simple. It wasn’t difficult and didn’t involve some elaborate scheme. There really wasn’t much “craft” involved in a traditional sense. I’m not even sure it’s any good. Just a little tinkering.

Each page of Twitter features 20 messages. So I went back two pages and copied the messages from the people I’m following – each 140 characters or less – and pasted them into Notepad. I started with one line per strophe and carried that out until I found a tweet that was naturally two lines long. I then made each strophe two lines in length even if that involved two tweets. I maintained that rhythm until two-line strophes only consisted of one tweet, then I added another tweet to make that strophe three lines. I did that until two tweets produced four lines and continued this pattern until the end of the poem and it played out. I made no revisions to the tweets themselves.

I had considered, initially, of taking out the @ replies and just using the tweets themselves (I did, by the way, delete all URLs included in tweets, with one exception). The @ replies are replies that I or another Twitterer made in response to someone else’s tweet. Chances are, you have no idea what the original tweet was because all you see if the @ reply. That means the person who made the original post has no relation to me whatsoever, but the person who replied is someone that I am following.

You will notice a connection to some of these lines. That’s because the same Twitterer is the author of those lines. But none of the tweets by the same Twitterer are back-to-back.

Does a Twitter poem necessarily have to be done this way? No, not really. It could be done any number of ways. This is simply the way I approached this one and decided to leave it at that. It’s only an experiment. I’m sure there will be readers whose response is “WTF”? Others will likely consider it genius. I’m OK with either response. I’m just doodling. Nothing serious. And I don’t mean that to be any pejorative slap at Flarfists. It’s just the way it is.

Social Media Poetry – A New Form?

Flarf has managed to gain some notoriety since its inception. I’m not sure why. The few Flarf poems that I’ve read are a bit senseless, much like what you’ll read below. But the way you should read this poem is not as one line of thought as you would much of contemporary poetry, or classic poetry for that matter. Rather, it should be read as multiple one-sided conversations going on at once, for that is precisely what it is. Imagine yourself at a party and hearing multiple conversations taking place throughout a crowded room, but you can only capture snippets of each conversation. That’s essentially what this is.

Could this be the advent of a new type of poetry? I don’t know. I’m sure someone will have an answer for that. But I do see where innovative poets could take this idea and run with it. Not just with Twitter, but with any social media tool. The idea of a social communication poem strikes me as more valuable than Google sculpting, a practice taken up by the Flarfists. One could classify this type of poem in the Flarf category. Google sculpting relies on one’s ability to search for key phrases and use snippets of conversation or content from websites, forums, blog posts, and other website content to create a poem. But the social communication poem has a different approach and focuses instead on a different aspect of human interaction. It involves taking snippets of written communication from the above-mentioned content publications and using those to craft a poem. How many ways can this be done? I think the possibilities are limitless.

But without further ado, I give you this, my first Twitter poem. Love it, hate it, throw verbal insults at me if you will. I don’t think it’s much, but it was interesting just to experiment.

Man pays electric bill with spider

wow pownce was aquired by six apart

Learned that in middle/HS culture getting your house TP’d is says “you are admired!”. Wouldn’t a Hallmark card been cheaper and less work?

i wonder why sixapart would aquire pownce and then close it down
How to tell the difference between a recession and a depression;

holy carp this is a good heroes. gripped for the whole thing. if you stopped watching the show (I’d understand why), start watching again.

Bet you they’re going to fold Pownce into Vox.
I think they plan to role the technology into their own micro-blogging platform

Looking for a picture on my computer. I have about 20000 ugh I am looking through
WOW!! I received ‘The Arte y Pico Award’, which is for writers, to inspire others with creativity by @debgallardo

So my Twuffer ‘future tweets’ actually went live 30 minutes early…..
@Kimberly_Bock Thanks for the warning. Didn’t realize that would jack with the stumbles. TY for the Stumble.
Accidentally put on the christopher cross SAILING – still an awesome song – so much testosterone! Hard core.

Ha and it uses the triangle. Even less popular than COWBELL
common consensus from y’all is that Six Apart bought pownce and killed it for talent/developers and the IP/technology.
plus…. Pownce was probably going cheap…. was anyone still using it?
Jonathan Coulton performs Code Monkey Unplugged

Creepy Doll – Jonathan Coulton
Someone opened Bartleby, The Scrivener by Herman Melville
Dont miss it! You can get the notification w/password (free) by registering at http://www.selfstartersweek…
@remarkablogger Wish I knew how to do that. I hate Vista SO much.

funny how much talk there is about Pownce on Twitter. There’s a little on Pownce but more here – guess that says something
4 Cool Resources You Need to Check Out –
The skies are not happy
@Allen_Taylor you’re welcome. going to comment after i write this post…

Shall we play a game?
Gotta run out and do an errand. Keep it up everyone.
I am better now listening to some yelling and atonality
just tried to log into pownce and got an error –
@problogger I’m with the consensus
you are not expendable.

this takes a lot for me to tweet, but with the holidays nearing, I wish I was more spiritual. I’ve got good morals, values, etc. but…
@Kimberly_Bock Thanks!
The State of the Micromediasphere. Wanna join in and be a guest on the show DM me!
Please keep praying for Zoe http://www.zoesheart.com/ @Nikki_s just told they found her a heart.

@amyderby I got this week off!
Flogging Molly – Death Valley Queen
Flogging Molly – Another Bag of Bricks
@Kimberly_Bock Nice heart.

Well, that’s it. Any suggestions for a title?

I’ve thought about this a lot lately. I said a while back that I was about ready to retire Rumsfeld’s Sandbox and start on something new. Of course, this is a book of poems, but the principle should hold for projects as well as individual poems. When it’s time to quit, it’s time. But when?

I’m not ready to give up on Rumsfeld’s Sandbox just yet. Emotionally, I’m ready for it to end, but there are still things left unsaid. Or perhaps it says too much. I feel that certain poems need more work, but I also feel that I’m missing a couple of poems and the hole that is left by their absence is gnawing at my intestines like a bad cancer. I can’t get it out.

I know, though, that some of the poems are “done.” They are complete. I know this because I can’t take anything else out of them and still improve them. What is there belongs. Nothing else belongs because to add to them would be like trying to pour a glass of water down the Niagara Falls. If that sounds absurd then I’ve made my point.

That’s when I know that an individual poem is finished: If I can look at it and not feel impelled to change it in any way then I’m ready to move on. But what about a book of poems?

I suspect that a book length project is the same. It isn’t finished until I can read through the collection and make no more additions, changes, or deletions and improve it. That’s quite a statement because if a collection is missing just one poem that belongs there then it isn’t finished. But what if that poem isn’t written yet? What if it is written, but I just don’t know it. What if it’s buried deep in my “come back to later” file and has been stored there for years? How will I find it?

I think finishing is a much more frightening experience than beginning. Because to finish a poem means that I’ve lived through it. Like a close call with death. As it happens you don’t notice, but after you’ve felt the tingling brush it becomes so noticeable you can’t get anything else out of your mind. And I’ve done this with poems. I have gone back and read and re-read a poem that I’ve written and finished and not changed it at all just to solidify in my mind that it’s done. And after about 50 times of that I am ready to share it with the world. Shards and all.

Incantation.

The Farallon Review.

Justice diverges in the wood for Frost home vandals.

I don’t know who this poet is. This is the first video I’ve seen from him, but it definitely made me subscribe to him to see what else he comes up with. I’d like to offer this analysis of why the poem hits me the way it does:

First, it’s a well-written lyric. It isn’t sentimental pablum, which rules out about 80% of the poetry videos that I’ve seen. I mean, we’re not talking about some 14-year-old girl here talking about flowers in a field, or some old guy sitting in a library reading William Wordsworth. Just read the poem:

My voice is like moss upon a cliff
When I wish it,
Or like hammer tongs on an alarm bell
When I rai+se it.
In every day I let it sit
Like evaporating fog upon the pavement,
Or for pleas,
It turns into a barefoot schoolboy.

I hate when men mistake my voice for a woman's.

What I don't have:
A songbird in morning,
A woman in yearning,
The dust of all the empty quarters of California.

I wish I had a voice,
Like the warm waters of a bath
That sup at a lady's skin.
Or a voice like waves of molten chocolate,
Strong and sweet and all-coating.

I wear brogues and drawls like suits,
Fitting for an impression I wish to set,
The contexts sets my pitch and pace,
Like the weather decides how to trim your sails.

But I think in my true voice:
A voice that wears boots,
All rustle of leather and topsoil dancing with the wind.
That's my true voice, but nobody ever hears it.

Taken from the “More Info” space on this video’s YouTube page, it is every bit as good as any other poem you’ll find in one of today’s literary journals. I mean, it won’t win the Bollingen Prize, but this poem could have been written by an MFA graduate at Vermont College. It’s about on the same level as other contemporary lyrical poem in terms of subject matter, style, tone, and craft.

If I had read this poem in a journal it would have just been another poem. I’d have liked it, but not as much. I wouldn’t have hated it. I wouldn’t have fallen in love with it. But I’d have noted that it was well crafted and moved on to the next poem. But the fact that I first encountered this poem as a video means that I get to hear it in the voice of the poet himself before being subjected to my own rendering without the aid of the poet’s voice to cast inflection upon it. That’s very important.

When I attend open mic poetry readings I am always conscious of delivery. My own as well as the other people at the reading. When another poet gets up to read his or her poems, I look at body language, listen for voice inflection, and try to get a sense of the poet’s own interpretation of their verse based on their oral communication skills. And when I read, I try to provide that for my audience as well. Sometimes I succeed and other times I don’t. But poets who learn to give an effective reading of their poetry at open readings are poets who learn to project, inflect, and emphasize what they consider to be the key words and phrases in their poems. You can get so much more by hearing it than you can by reading it and when you do read the poem, after you’ve heard the poet himself read it, then you can actually hear the poet’s voice as you read the poem yourself. To me, that’s the best way to experience a poem.

Unlike many poetry videos, however, this one is not simply a recording of somebody on a stage reading from a book or performing a spoken word poem. Many of those are good, but this is performance poetry that isn’t ostentatious about the performance.

The poet is sitting in what appears to be a rather comfortable chair. He’s laid back, not tense, not in any way angry or verbally abrasive. He’s got a pleasant voice for reading, but he’s not at all what you would call “good to look at.” I mean, he’s not an attractive person, but he isn’t necessarily offensive looking either. He’s rather average looking and that only bears mentioning because his performance in no way is dependent upon him being attractive or appearing in any particular way. His performance pretty much just stands on its own.

The setting, as well, is quite appropriate. You see a curtain in the backdrop, and a mantle behind him. There’s a little clutter in the background and it looks like the poet is in a natural setting. A place that is comfortable for him yet reflects his “inner self.” It’s appropriate for the poem.

But the setting aside, and the poet’s appearance and comfort by the side, the real performance is in the voice because there is no action. Throughout the poem, he just sits. But, again, that’s appropriate for the conversational tone of the poem. His voice inflections, however, tell the entire story. Not in a pretentious way, but in a sincere telling of the poem. He pauses when he should, raises his voice at the appropriate times, and tells the poem as if you can truly believe this is the way feels. Maybe he feels that way or maybe he doesn’t; it could just be a performance. But he makes me believe that he feels that way about himself. And that’s what a good reading of a poem should do. It’s also what a video poem should do. It is a visual and auditory representation of the actual imagery and tone of a poem. And this poet captures that in both tone and voice, his telling as well as the visual representation. Everything works together. That’s what a poetry video should do.