SOCIAL MEDIA POETICS: THE TECHNOLOGICAL FORMS OF ALT LIT POETRY

Poets on Twitter often use the medium for the purposes of publication and promotion. However, writers from the Alt Lit movement have used Twitter and other social media platforms for more creative purposes. Here, I examine the presence of a social media poetics in the work of Tao Lin and Mira Gonzalez. The article highlights features of the movement which illustrate its contemporary relevance and recommend it for analysis and critique in the current moment. Close readings within the framework of lyric reading reveal shifts that occur social media posts are reworked for poetrys printed page. During this process, a solitary speaking voice invites a lyric reading, while the verse line preserves an essential formal relationship with the social media post which is concealed by the logic of lyric reading. The article positions Alt Lit writers as successors to a tradition, articulated by Charles Olson and the Beats, which linked the verse line with the poets breath. Similar principles to those which informed these theories featured prominently in the development of the mobile communications technologies, and I argue for a distinct line which connects these poetic theories and practices, and their engagements with technology, to Alt Lit.