Poetic Twitter bios

Lines from poems, recast as Twitter bios.

The idea occurred to me, reading a poem by Billy Collins, that a particular line could fit perfectly the form of a Twitter Bio.

I've since gone back through several of his collections, and found many more lines that for various reasons strike me as curiously hilarious when placed in the curious context of the Twitter bio.

I'll update this post as I discover more, and look for the same in other poets.

Billy Collins

There's always a lesson to be learned
whether in a hotel bar
or over tea in a teahouse,
no matter which way it goes,

for you, or against,
what you want to hear or what you don't.

This is the way it was in school.

I can see it all from my couch where
I'm playing a few sad tunes on the piccolo.

So odd to suddenly become subject matter

Some days, I look worse than yesterday's oatmeal.

Here I am in a wallpapered room
raising a glass of birthday whiskey
and picturing your face

But let us not go overboard.

I'm not going to put a lot of work into this

a seventeenth-century doctor
arrested for trading with Dutch merchants

trying [my] best
to make death look good

I would rather eat at the bar

It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.

just me,
a thin reed blowing in the night