"Brevity is the Soul of Wit"

Twitter has taken the world by storm. It's easy, fast, and convenient. It allows you to let anyone you want know what you are doing or thinking at any time.

Until recently the major criticism of Twitter was that 'tweets' tended to be of trivial import. It was discovered that the importance many people attach to their own ephemeral thoughts or actions greatly exceeds the common estimate.

Then came the election protests in Iran. For once, people used Twitter, along with Facebook and other sites, as a serious effort to effect social and political change.

Now, we at the World Mind Network would like to go a step further. We'd like to know if tweets can produce writing of lasting quality.

We have scanned the globe to find respected poetic forms which can be completed in fewer than 140 characters. We came up with the Limerick, Haiku, the Clerihew, Quintilla, the Than-Bauk, Sijo, Cinquain, and Kural.

We request that you try your hand at creating tweets which fit these formats. We are offering a prize for the best work. Details are at the bottom. We'll add some of the entries to this site. (If you don't want your poem included, or if you want your name withheld, tell us.)

First, we'll describe each form. In most cases we'll cite a traditional example, and then write a modern version, using as subject matter this very site itself.
　
The Limerick
　
Popularized by the 19th century English writer Edward Lear, these consist of five anapestic lines, with an aabba rhyme scheme. A famous one is
　
The limerick packs laughs anatomical
In space that is quite economical,
But the good ones I've seen
So seldom are clean,
And the clean ones so seldom are comical.
　
And here's one which describes the present project:
　
Can Tweeting aspire to High Art?
Can it match wits with Goethe? Descartes?
With Sappho? Huang Po?
For now, we don't know;
But go to your keyboard and start!

Here's our first Limerick contest entry:

　
Haiku is an ancient Japanese poetic form consisting of three lines: one of five, one of seven, and one of five syllables.

Orange light flickers
Shadows dancing on the wall
Kindred flames arise
　
And here's one about this site:
　
Microblogging Rules!
Instant downloads from my brain
Shared with everyone

Here's a haiku entry for our contest, by Sue David:



　
The Kural is an old style of verse from South India, originally written in Tamil. It consists of two lines, one with four words and one with three. It was perfected by Thiruvalluvar, whose Thirukkural, consisting of 1330 poems in 133 chapters was completed in the fourth century AD.

Pleasure, rhythm, power, surprise
Rhyme's glorious conquistadors
　
And one about our subject:
　
Wisdom erupts through Brevity;
Twitter achieves Immortality!


　
The Clerihew is a four line biographical poem invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley. The rhyme structure is aabb. Clerihews are usually about someone famous, whose name takes up the first line.
The first Clerihew ever written, when Bentley was a 16 year old student:
　
Sir Humphry Davy
Was not fond of gravy.
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered sodium
　
One of the most recent was the winner of a contest sponsored by Games magazine in 1983:
　
Did Descartes
Depart
With the thought
"Therefore I'm not"?
　
Here's a Clerihew describing the rationale behind our contest. It references Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, and Biz Stone, who founded Twitter in 2006.
　
Evan, Biz, and Jack
Felt that instant personal updates were something we lacked;
Though we appreciate (sometimes) peoples' desires to microblog their thought streams with such prodigious fecundity,
Still, we often wish Tweets displayed a little less banality and a little more profundity.



　
The Cinquain is a five line poem invented by the American writer Adelaide Crapsey. Here's a traditional one, followed by our attempt:

Tree
white, tall
reaching, bending, fluttering
leaves and twigs in the wind
aspen

From readwritething.org; author unknown
　
Microblogging
instant, topical
capturing Life's moments
evocative, punchy, immediate,
Twitter!

Here's our first cinquain contest entry, from Carrie Cook:


Weekend

Wrapped in bed sheets

Coffee, TV, and me

I loved you best, then. But now I’m

broken.



A Quintilla is a five line verse, originating in Spain, with an abaab or aabba rhyme scheme.


Hubo una selva y un nido
y en ese nido un jilguero
que alegre y estremecido
tras de un ensueno querido
cruzo por el mundo entero

Manuel Acuna

　
Here's one from Australia:

A flickering flame, on the wall
The sound of a coyotes call
The desert winds, singing at night
Sandstorms dancing, in the moonlight
Embracing lovers to befall



Pat Bibbs, from 'A Poet's Garret' [we don't know the reason for the colored letters, but since that's how he/she published it on the web, we have preserved them]
　

　
The Sijo is a medieval Korean verse form consisting of three lines, with about 15 syllables each. It resembles the haiku in tone and subject matter (often nature, or lost love).

You ask how many friends I have? Water and stone, bamboo and pine
the moon rising over the eastern hill is a joyful comrade.
Besides these five companions, what other pleasure should I ask?

Yun Seondo, 1587-1671
　
　
　
The Than-Bauk is a three line poem of Burmese origin. The last syllble in the first line rhymes with the third syllable in the second line, and the second syllable in the last line. Thus:

Lighten Up

Turn on the lights;
don't let sights of
dark nights haunt you.

Suzanne Honour, 2002
　
Here's a new Than-bauk about Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese political reformer and winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, still under house arrest in Burma (Myanmar):
　
Aung San Suu Kyi
　
Though she's in jail
Her words sail far!
All hail her name!
　
We are offering an award of 500 US dollars for the best short poem in one of the preceding formats, containing 140 characters or less. The contest deadline is September 1st, 2009. Entries must be emailed to Twitterlit@gmail.com. A name, phone number and email must be included so we can verify sender. We won't read entries from a Twitter feed, since re-tweeting makes original authorship difficult to determine. Prize will be awarded via Paypal. Judges' decisions are final. We reserve the right not to award a prize, if no entry is found worthy enough.

In honor of MJ, let's finish this together...

It's close to midnight and someone’s busy typing in the dark
Under the moonlight, you hear a sound that almost stops your heart
Try to delete but ENTER takes control before you make it
You press DELETE the cursor’s blinking right before your eyes
You're paralyzed

'Cause this is twitter, twitter night
And no one's gonna save you cause the keyboard’s your delight
You know it's twitter, twitter night
You're tweeting for your life inside a twitter, twitter tonight

your turn...