Just for fun: a TWEET little sonnet

I was thinking about stupid modern things, and people who don't like reasonably generous size stories or other forms of literature, and a Certain Magazine which thinks Brevity is the Sole of Wit - or something. Of course this problem is around 800 years old, as we know "Gaudent Moderni Brevitate" = "The moderns rejoice in brevity" which was the beginning of a famous discussion of music from 1325. (De Handlo, I think, is the author's name.)

Anyway, as you know, my Saga is NOT brief. But then I do not like that goofy playrite named Slopskeer either. (Not only could he not rite, he couldn't spel. Hee hee.) Ahem. So, just for fun, I asked a friend about this "twit" thing, and how many characters were permitted, and I was told, 140. So I guess we have a new quantity-word: a "twit" (or "tweet") is four less than a gross. Eau que! I can handle that. I guess eventually we'll see the ISO add it to the universal constants, if they can ever get to an agreement... I wonder what the metric version will be, and whether there will be a platinum-iridium reference Twit in a sealed glass case over in Paris... oh my the fertility of the fun! Another day for that.

Well, since that goofy playwright wrote sonnets too, I decided to try to produce a sonnet which could fit into a Twit. Obviously, I could not abide by the usual beats-per-line thing, but then no real poems have that, just as it is not a poem if it does not rhyme. (I call those other things "poem-like substances" - as in Homer and the Roman dudes, etc. Too bad, they might have been famous if their stuff had rhymed. (hee hee!) But those gaggy modern things I simply use and then flush.) But this post is not a comment about poems. It is a laugh. I did manage to make a little something, and unless I counted wrong, there's just 139 characters here. See what you think. I give it twice: once in the twit-condensed form, and again with some white space tomake it readable. You know, leaving white space out is not very modern at all, the Greeks and Romans and even the ancient Egyptians did that. Oh my. Anyway, here's a tweetable sonnet for your amusement:

They exhort/TWEET:/Short/& sweet./A word/Misplaced/Unheard/Disgraced/Sad/Empty gigs/Bad/Dead twigs./Thank God for fitter/Pens than TWITTER.

[Dr. Thursday June 5 2011]

They exhort

TWEET:

Short

& sweet.

A word

Misplaced

Unheard

Disgraced

Sad

Empty gigs

Bad

Dead twigs.

Thank God for fitter
Pens than TWITTER.

[Dr. Thursday June 5 2011]

And... if you think it horrid, just take it as a challenge... try it yourself.