Aaron Belz
GET UPDATES FROM Aaron Belz
 
Aaron Belz’s interest in the short form arises partly from his love of literature, partly from his study of comedy, and partly from his inveterate fixation with new media.

Belz has published two books of poetry, The Bird Hoverer (2007) and Lovely, Raspberry (2010), written a 190-page dissertation entitled “Something Mechanical: Popular Comedy’s Influence on Modern American Poetry, 1900-1960,” and his first writings about new media appeared during the late 1990s in a column for The Riverfront Times-St. Louis covering then-emerging phenomena such as eBay and Expedia.

Twitter, at first scorned by Belz, then entertained by him as plausible, has come to represent a shared horizon for all three of these interests. His first foray into Twitter was in response to a horrifyingly banal Justin Bieber tweet (see "A Month of Tweeting"). Now he’s hooked but wants to define standards. What can/ought to be communicated in 140 or fewer characters? What is the fate of an individual tweet or feed? Is Twitter a viable medium for "real literature"? And so forth.

Blog Entries by Aaron Belz

Literary Twitter: @prodigalsam

(0) Comments | Posted May 17, 2012 | 6:42 PM

Add his position as a Christian campus minister at University of South Carolina to his wicked -- some churchgoers might deem overly wicked -- sense of verbal and situational irony, and Sammy Rhodes (@prodigalsam) has both the raw materials and intellectual giftedness to cultivate a Twitter following that has almost...

Read Post

Literary Twitter: @TortyCraig

(1) Comments | Posted October 19, 2011 | 11:35 AM

As the World Series approaches, America turns to Twitter. It's where reporters drop gossip tidbits, lineup cards are revealed, analysts crunch stats, and athletes talk trash. It's where everyone mans up and then apologizes. Updated every second, it has become baseball's liveliest public square -- that many-to-many conversation Don Peppers...

Read Post

Literary Twitter: @thesulk

(4) Comments | Posted June 27, 2011 | 3:52 PM

When it comes to composing an individual tweet, that singularly repeatable text, Alec Sulkin is a modern master. A writer/producer for Family Guy who's recently been tendered a three-year contract to come up with a new show for Fox, he's clearly bank. But he would not...

Read Post

Literary Twitter: @DadBoner

(3) Comments | Posted June 23, 2011 | 12:04 PM

The question arises again and again: how permanent are digital media? Internet pioneer Steward Brand addresses it "Written on the Wind," in which he observes that "digital artifacts are increasingly complex to revive" and "quickly outnumbering all possible human users."

Brand wants permanence, and however younger digital...

Read Post