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Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Wordsworth tweets

I watched the comedy central show "Cobert Report" the other day on which Stephen Colbert interviewed the director of the movie "The Social Network". In the interview, (which i couldn't find on youtube but if you find it watch it because it is classic) Colbert says something like: "today, social networking is our existence; I tweet therefore I am". The director, David Fisher, defends his position to not have a facebook page personally by saying: "i feel socializing on the internet is to socializing as reality TV is to reality". now there are obvious connections to this class and the historical content thereof (queue Descartes). however, here i want to connect Twitter to the great poet William Wordsworth.
“The principal object, then, which I proposed to myself in these Poems was to chuse (sic) incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them, throughout, as far as was possible, in a selection of language really used by men; and, at the same time, to throw over them a certain colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual way; and, further, and above all, to make these incidents and situations interesting by tracing in them, truly though not ostentatiously, the primary laws of our nature: chiefly, as far as regards the manner in which we associate ideas in a state of excitement.” This quote taken from this website got me thinking that we all can be potential Wordsworths. that those who use twitter literally take situations from common life, and relate or describe them to their peers in a language "really used by men". and my analogy was only supported by Katherine's blog when she said of the poem Tintern Abbey: "In “Tintern Abbey” I believe Wordsworth achieved to a great extent his notions of using “language really used by men” to describe “incidents and situations from common life” in a way that would “throw over them a certain colouring of imagination.” " This may be somewhat of a stretch but i think that the tweets and status updates of twitter, though not always poetry actually accomplish the same means as that of the famous romantic. by hearing our peers thoughts and status' we are covered by a coloring of imagination which literally changes our view of the world around us. i will have to keep thinking about this a little. but i really think that the simpleness of tweets can have the same effect on us as simple romantic poetry.

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