From my colleague, Kareem Estefan:

The question "what are you doing right now?" rings through the minds of Facebook users all day, compelling many of us to observe our every action. But what happens when the responses to that omnipresent question are falsified, fictionalized, and converted into flippant poetry? Bill Kennedy and Darren Wershler have some answers over at statusupdate.ca, a website they've designed that compiles status updates and replaces their friends' names with those of poets and novelists, dead and alive.
Scrolling down the page, which changes its content each time you click the "refresh" button, you might be surprised to learn that the Chinese poet Cao Zhi, who wrote verse in the 3rd century, is sharing "a late Valentine's gift of free music at http://scruffytheyak.blogspot.com/." Or that the Modernist poet Marianne Moore, who died nearly thirty years ago, is "now Twittering at least thrice a day!" I've been most tickled to see that the 12th century poet Marie de France is looking for a place to live by March 1st, and, allegedly, "James Joyce's flip-flops are angry with her."
If it doesn't sound like poetry to you, try following the links (you can click on any writer's name and read all their status updates to date). Compile the language you enjoy, re-arrange the updates, and/or tell us what you're doing right now. Post your remixes as a comment below.
Alternately, if you long to return to the days when the typewriter was the tool all writers used, you can listen to an NPR interview with Darren Wershler-Henry here, shortly after the release of his excellent book The Iron Whim: A Fragmented History of the Typewriter.

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1:12 - February 17, 2009

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