Here is a poem that you and I and whomever else wrote together by writing and reading this weblog, so why don’t you read it, out loud:
Photos of tulips in snow
by you and me and whomever elsequicksilver cube
ftff
anakin skywalker “you can try”
“paul ford” sitekit
quicksilver cube
frieze building
slicehost
slicehost
slicehost
animal crossing keep trees alive
ann arbor aerial photos
left behind at the fishbowl
brian
the possibility love is not enough
Certainly I’m being disingenuous — or at least strategic — with this poem. I made the poem from the most recent search queries that brought people to this weblog, in chronological order as reported by 103bees. But when I did this, I made some poetic decisions. For example, since my poem is a sonnet, I couldn’t include the evocative fifteenth query, which was “photos of tulips in snow.” That’s how it became the poem’s title.
How to be a poet
- Write things
- Let others find those things while you go live your life for a bit
- Decide how long your poem should be — if you are brave, try a sestina, six six-line stanzas and one little three-line appendage at the end
- Open your whatever analytics software
- Copy out the right number of lines
- Punctuate and line-break your poem as needed
- Title, if desired
Objections
Objection my poem doesn’t rhyme. So what? You wrote, or hinted at, the word lines of your poem in whatever you wrote about in the first place. And the merry brigade of googlers or jeeves-inquirers or what have you related the word lines to each other.
Objection intentionality. :P (alternate: intentionality is a cargo cult.)
Objection there is no demand for my poem. Your poem is a creative + generative activity. By imposing an order and sequence to the word lines in your poem, you can see new relationships between the things you have written about and others have searched for.
evan | 05-Mar-07 at 4:13 pm | Permalink
Chicago redux! The readers write the text on the author.
AHFB | 06-Mar-07 at 5:38 pm | Permalink
I submit that the less searched for terms are equally “poetic”
why do we have to follow rules in school?
high school junior internships
cancer, essay, flash
ecofeminism
year of wonders 4 paragraph essay
somethingawful wikipedia
complete left behind collection
AHFB | 06-Mar-07 at 5:39 pm | Permalink
^^^ that used to look like a poem, but it seems your comments section takes out all line breaks.
Brian | 06-Mar-07 at 6:05 pm | Permalink
My comments section sucks. I used blogger’s privilege to re-insert the line breaks.
Thanks for the poem! Does it have a title?
srah | 08-Mar-07 at 10:21 pm | Permalink
A haiku.
does mayonnaise expire
pudding mix expire?
terrible rotten egg smell
srah | 08-Mar-07 at 10:22 pm | Permalink
Darn it, haiku is 5-7-5, not 7-5-7. Mine is still an elegant poem, if not a haiku.
srah | 08-Mar-07 at 10:26 pm | Permalink
the innocent shall suffer
i have something in my pocket
innocent shall suffer big time
something in my pocket
cincinnati sausage
blah blah blah
yakity yak
blah blah
blah
cheese house made from
house made from cheese
Andrea | 09-Mar-07 at 6:02 pm | Permalink
the social life of information
knitta, please–
where i can start writing information about my class, mates?
people so busy working
(they have no social life)
knit cozies sweater season
malabrigo,
cognac
where are my molars located in my mouth?
oral surgery
button and chain,
headgear,
braces…
mental versus physical:
ho,
to present
your self
to make a
social life
Andrea | 09-Mar-07 at 6:04 pm | Permalink
Augh, the comment didn’t preserve my poetic formatting! For shame…
Brian | 09-Mar-07 at 8:07 pm | Permalink
@srah: I have memorized the haiku, it’s awesome, I think it shows a new frontier for evocative bio-type weblog analytics poetics. Thanks!
@andrea: hey I fixed your poetic formatting. (like I’ve had to do for almost everybody else’s — I should figure out why my comment fields suck so badly) thanks for the poem!
srah | 10-Mar-07 at 9:31 am | Permalink
Thank you for giving me a forum to express my other people’s words. bows