[Gail White]

Seems like most of the poems that use high-tech references are light verse...Light Quareterlty probably has many in its pages. I wrote a ballade once with the refrain "So would you kindly put your cell phone down", which LQ printed.

Topical references are more of a problem. I used Brad Pitt once in a poem as an example of a great catch, but on the theory that I'd still be read in a hundred years, later substituted the words "a rich man."

[Andrew Frisardi]

dipshit comment deleted

[Julie Steiner]

Before I sent in my Nemerov Award entry in November 2009, I went back and forth on one line:
"Last night I saw my daughter's MySpace page,"
"Last night I saw my daughter's Facebook page,"

I went with MySpace. Dad nab it! I finally make the finalist pool, and my poem is outdated before it's even published!

[Janice D. Soderling]

Where were we, back before the whole world changed?
The person jabbering in the street alone
xxxxWas certainly deranged,
xxxxNow he’s just on the phone

This from post #1 reminds me of something Aldous Huxley wrote about his first visit to America. Can't remember the exact wording, but it was something to the effect that he initially thought all Americans were in the habit of talking to themselves, but he found out they were only chewing gum.

[Andrew Frisardi]

Gregory, in answer to your original question in this thread, "Where are the poems of Facebook," etc., another one I just remembered is by our own Maryann C., a fine poem called "MySpace Invader," that's in her chapbook Dissonance. I really like the closing lines, which themselves are a comment on this subject:

What strangeness will engulf our lives when they
smile out of every pixel, wild and golden?
I need to know what world I will be old in.

[Maryann Corbett]

Thanks, Andrew! If we hadn't disabled it, I'd feel a terrible temptation to use the Facebook-like "Like" function included in this board's software

The Iron Horse Literary Review was recently collecting submissions for a Facebook poems issue. I'll check when it will appear.

It dawns on me that I've used cell phones in at least two poems. Nemo Hill's "Um Portugues," which appeared in 14 by 14, focuses on a phone message machine.

Shortly after 9/11 there was a lot of prose about the last phone messages left by the dead. Does anyone recall pertinent poems?

[Gregory Dowling]

Yes, the answering-machine does seem to lend itself to poetry. Didn't Tim Murphy write one about Helen Hecht, who could never bring herself to change the message on her machine after Anthony Hecht had died? Or am I inventing that?

Thanks, Andrew, for posting those lovely last few lines of Maryann's poem. Could we see the rest?

[Andrew Frisardi]

Originally Posted by Gregory Dowling

Thanks, Andrew, for posting those lovely last few lines of Maryann's poem. Could we see the rest?

Sure!

MySpace Invader

Not stalking. It's research. I have to learn
this uncouth tongue, this wOOt and LssT and pwn.
I need to understand. Who are these people
who've friended you? who turn the ether purple
with their rank gossip and their splatball anger?
who youtube every crook of a middle finger?
who post and link and tag and thread the world
so knotted every truth I know goes snarled?

Small wonder if I lurk. A blogger's ruse
or facebook feint tomorrow might disclose
new-ravelled rules, enweb new mystery.
What strangeness will engulf our lives when they
smile out of every pixel, wild and golden?
I need to know what world I will be old in.

--Maryann Corbett