A Facebook Memory and the Origin of Tweetspeak Poetry

It’s difficult for me to imagine that I’ve had a Facebook account for at least 17 years, but a Facebook memory popped up this week to prove it. It caught my attention became of the title: “Who Were You in My Dream?” 

I thought, why does that sound like a poem?

 

Probably because it was. But not just any poem.

 

One Saturday afternoon in the summer of 2009, back when Twitter was called Twitter, three people were having a Twitter conversation – L.L. Barkat, Jim Woods, and myself. Somehow, the subject turned to poetry (well. L.L. Barkat was involved, so that was probably inevitable), and we began tweeting poetic lines at each other. And an idea was born. What about doing a poetry jam on Twitter?

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Photograph by Melpo Tsiliaki via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Thursday Readings

 

“The Silver Swan, Who Living Had No Note,” poem by Orlando Gibbons and “Out Upon It,” poem by Sir John Suckling– Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Those Constant Stars, Thine Eyes: A reading of Shakespeare’s fourteenth sonnet – K.S. Bernstein at Apple Blossoms in a Mournful Wood.

Some Wednesday Readings - Sept. 16, 2026

 

A Return to Earnestness – Kelly Keller at Story Warren.

 

Francis Scott Key and the Making of a New American Anthem – Jason Clark at This is the Day.

 

You Are Not the Only – Peter Tonguette at Portico on the writing of Anne Tyler.

 

Ave, Patrick Deneen! and Ave, Patrick Deneen: The Conservative American Revolution – Bradley Birzer at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

How Artists Communication: A Look at J.M.W. Turner – Sara Swacina at Faith on View.

 

Processing: How Nicholas Russell Wrote Observer – Lincoln Michel at Counter Craft.

 

On Binning Books and Buying Revolvers – Andrew Roycroft at New Grub Street.

 

10 Million Readers, Not 10 Million Copies – Travis Thrasher at Patches of Sunlight.

 

Historians, please stop using CE and BCE – Kevin Clark at Not that you asked, but.

 

Painting: Francis Scott Key, about 1825, attributed to Joseph Wood (1778-1830). 

Poets and Poems: J.I. Kleinberg and “All of We”

Take a text, any text. It might be a paragraph from a novel, an excerpt of an essay, a newspaper article, a poem, words in advertisements, or your own journal. Then look for ideas, words that stand out, sentences or phrases that can be formed by extracting words. Highlight what you’ve selected, or black out the surrounding text. Assemble the selected words in a new text, or you can simply leave them as is. What you have is a found poem. 

It’s not as easy as it might sound. In fact, it can as much time, thought, and effort as writing an original poem. A found poem can both construct and deconstruct a text. 

 

Ezra Pound extracted words and phrases from historical letters and government documents to help create his Cantos. A poetry collection based on the press briefings of Donald Rumsfeld was published in 2003. Found pounds have been created from baseball calls by the announcer for the New York Yankees. Other sources of found poems have been the etiquette books of Emily Post, the trial testimony of Charles Manson, The Elements of Style by Strunk and White, Wonder Woman comics books, and more. 

 

Poet J.I. Kleinberg collected examples of phrases and texts involved the word “we.” She explains that it is an inclusive word, implying all or at least a group. “We suggests the whole greater than the sum of its parts, the possibility of empathy, humanity, history, we inclusive of good and bad, familiar and surprising, guilty, optimistic, despairing…” She didn’t so much assemble the phrases as she designed the words into found poems (her master’s degree is in design). 

 

The result is All of We: Found Poems. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Homer’s Odyssey Book 1 – a Visualized Reading – Classical Poetry Live.

 

Poetry Prompt: Oh, My Word – L.L. Barkat at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

What Is Metempsychosis? – poem by Tina Kelley at Every DayPoems.

 

“The Highwayman,” Poem by Alfred Noyes – Joseph Bottum at Poems and Ancient and Modern.

Some Monday Readings – Sept. 14, 2026

London’s ice cream wars – Jim Warerson, David Hall, and Polly Smythe at London Centric. 

The Other Side (of sad stories) – Glenn McCarty at Story Warren.

 

College campuses need to be liberated from their administrators – Barry Lam at College Town.

 

Don Quixote’s Guide to Better Reading – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

9/11 and How the Western Left Continues to Shame Itself – Andrew Devine at The Devine Message.

 

A Prayer for Grandparents Day – Yuri Bezemov at How to Subvert Subversion.

 

Don’t Miss Your Opportunities – Terry Whalin at The Writing Life.

 

American nature: On a pair of exhibitions at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site – James Panero at The New Criterion.

 

Short Story, Deep Treasures: Biblical Allusion in “The Gift of the Magi” – John Savoie at Literary Matters.

Painting: Mount Chocorua, New Hampshire (1827), oil on canvas by Thomas Cole (1801-1848).

Three days

After Luke 2:41-52 

The travel group is large,

men and women, old

and young, children and

the elderly, parents and

grandparents, many

related, all known

to each other, all knowing

they’d watch out for each

other and the children.

They travel a day before

the couple realize their

son, their oldest, is not

with the group, Panic

seizes their hearts;

they hurry back to the city,

to Jerusalem. They look

everywhere, searching,

asking everyone if they’d

seen the boy, panic rising

in their hearts as they visit

and revisit every place

they’d seen and visited and 

rested. After three days, 

three days of imagining

the worst, three days 

of panic and anxiety, 

three days of growing

fear and despondency,

three days of looking

everywhere except,

perhaps, the least and

the most obvious,

the temple, the house 

of God. Three days, 

and the boy they feared

was dead, was found,

as if he’d risen again

in their hearts.

 

Photograph by Cole Keister via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

The Face We All Look For – Ami Wickiser at Gospel-Centered Discipleship.

 

Delicious Life – Elizabeth Stice at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

A Shepherd’s Heart: Honest Conversations when Members Leave Upset – Dan Reiland.

Saturday Good Reads - Sept. 12, 2026

The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered beginning in 1947. A group of Bedouin shepherds discovered clay jars almost a thousand years old in desert caves. Jars kept being discovered into 1956. Selections from the scrolls are being exhibited this year at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. And Michael De Sapio at The Imaginative Conservative explains why the scrolls are so important to Western civilization. 

It happened back in the 1920s, a time of excess, prosperity, and broad disillusionment. America seemed to fall in love with vicious killers. And now, it seems to be happening again. Daniel Darling at The Daily Wire explains why America, or some subset of Americans, now worships its cold-blooded killers.

 

I have been bombarded by emails from people described as marketing experts, agents, editors, and book promoters, often with elaborate descriptions of my novels and how wonderful they are. Your heart might react a little, until you realize that all of these experts are likely derived from an AI application and the whole thing is a scam. Tim Challies explains how scammers are targeting Christian authors.

 

More Good Reads

 

America 250

 

The Poetry of American Independence – Steve Knepper and Brad Skow at New Verse Review.

 

Strange Bedfellows: Adams and Franklin – Chris Mackowski at Emerging Revolutionary War Era.

 

How Did the Nation Get Its Name? – Greg Daugherty at Smithsonian Magazine.

 

A Battle in Our Own Backyard – Molly McMurphy at Missouri Historical Society.

 

Washington’s Invalid Crops: Wounded Warriors Still Served the Revolutionary Cause – David Welker at Journal of the American Revolution.

 

Life and Culture

 

The Crucifixion of Patrick Clancy – Bethel McGrew at Further Up.

 

Homeschooling Is More Normal Than You Think – Tessa Carman at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

Faith

 

Why we need to be students of the past / church history – Michael A.G. Azad Haykin at Historia ecclesiastica.

 

A Catechism on Technology – Darryl Dash at Dashhouse.

 

Writing and Literature

 

What is literary criticism, if not close reading? Art, Magic, and Common Sense – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

American Stuff

 

The Enduring Tragedy of 9/11 – Michael Oren at Clarity.

 

25 years ago, two strangers met in the twin towers and escaped on 9/11. What happened next? – David Smith at The Guardian.

 

On Escaping This Horrible Era – Matt Taibbi at Racket News.

 

The First Rough Draft of 9/11 History – Nicholas Clairmont at The Free Press. 

 

Poetry

 

“My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is,” poem by Sir. Edward Dyer – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

“September 1913,” poem by Wiliam Butler Yeats – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

British Stuff

 

Tearing at the fabric – James Price at The Critic Magazine.

 

Shut Up and Dance – Movie Compilations

Painting: Hotel Room, oil on canvas (1931) by Edwad Hopper (1882-1967); Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.

Annual visit

After Luke 2:41-52 

It was something they did

every year, a journey

from Nazareth to Jerusalem,

to celebrate the Passover,

the remembrance of God’s

salvation of the people,

deliverance from Egypt,

deliverance from slavery,

the passing over the houses

marked with the blood

of the lamb over the doorway,

protected from the angel

of death. Jerusalem was

crowded, as it always was

at Passover, people crowding

into the city, packed throngs

around the temple, noise and

chaos and the bleating of lambs

to be sacrificed, food vendors

shouting, confusing to those

who did it every year. This year,

the couple from Nazareth brought 

their oldest, a 12-year-old boy,

a boy coming to visit

his father’s house.

 

Photograph by Toa Heftiba via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

“The Wish to Be Generous,” poem by Wendell Berry – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 

“Lord of A Hopefulness,” poem by Joyce Anstruther – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

The Illustration – poem by Seth Lewis.