So to try and continue to evolve FTP…  There are a handful of projects boiling around in my head — the first of which was proposed by one of FTP’s followers, Caissie (a recommended follow, btw). If you have other ideas too, please let me know.

The first I’m trying is themed days — groups of poems on a given theme, tied together with a hash tag.  If you have suggestions for new themes, please let me know:  foundtwitterpoems [AT] gmail [DOT] com

Each theme gets a hashtag, so with any luck the theme can live over time and gradually grow to be a kind of index for FTP.  (Or maybe not, since the search function on Twitter only seems to find hashtagged tweets from the quite recent past.  Hmm…)

The themes so far, in reverse chronological order:

• • The sea, the ocean, honoring the end of summer (8/18-8/19/10): #FTPsea
• • Partying, drinking, dancing, and generally having fun (7/22/10): #FTPparty
• • Love, and all its attendant baggage (7/20/10): #FTPlove
• • My personal favorites from the first year of FTP: #FTP1yr

Everyday for 365 days, a different person will write an entry about their experience that day. It doesn’t have to be about a specific topic, the key is that it somehow relates to what is happening in the world that day and how it relates to them. By doing so, starting from January 1 to December 31 of 2010, we will have a snapshot of the entire year, told from the perspective of 365 individual voices.

I signed up in the middle of January, as soon as I heard about it, and booked a date for the end of July.  Yesterday, in fact.  I’m proud to be a part of it, and this is my contribution, published 24 July, 2010:

Last night’s tornado-alert thunderstorm ripped down the spine of Manhattan, but brought no relief from the heat today.  Made it worse, if you ask me.  The heat index is 105 in the city.  Humidity wraps you in a wool blanket, smothering any kind of ambition.

Still, it’s cruel to stay inside.  The apartment is just too small.  Children need backyards, I always say, arguing for suburban life to my city-born wife.  We head to a playground on the north edge of Central Park, where the sprinkler is half-shaded by trees.  It’s already crowded when we get there — we knew it would be.

The kids in our neighborhood are expert practitioners in the art and science of staying cool.  They sit on the sprinkler.  They pull their shirts entirely over the sprinkler, letting the cold water course up around their torsos and down their legs.  It’s selfish, I think, to block the water for everyone else, but no other parent there seems to mind.  They’ve brought empty soda bottles and Chinese take-out containers from home to fill with water and dump on their unsuspecting brother’s head.

My daughter, Lucy, tries to stand her ground under the spray of water to fill up her bucket.  She’s 4 years old, tall for her age, but most of the kids are bigger and older — anywhere up to 10 or 12 years old.  Everyone knows everyone else.

It seems a shame to have to work so hard at having fun, to have to defend yourself.  My daughter is determined, though it should just be about the joy of playing.  Especially on a day like today.

Lucy gets jostled — shoved?  And then an older girl grabs the bucket from her.  I stand up, wary, not afraid to call out someone else’s kid.

But the older girl shoves into the scrum of kids surrounding the sprinkler with the bucket and then beckons back to Lucy.  She hands her the bucket and keeps the other kids back while Lucy fills it.

Then they both run off, screaming in different directions.

And that’s the best relief from the heat.

So I asked the authors of some of my favorite found twitter poems from the first year what they thought makes a good found poem.  This is what they said.

• A good found Twitter poem is simply an observation rendered both truthfully and beautifully at the same time. (@katerbee)

• One that works with seen examples of life’s beautiful details. Something that speaks of a mood but also an experience. (@jensenwilder)

• something that works free from context, something that appears to be both dense and generative. things that rhyme. (@faris)

• i instantly want to commit it to memory. (@askpiper)

• I love the FTPs that are clearly some random thought or inside joke that was never intended to be a RT…u can tell when it seems contrived. (@hermeygirl)

• My favorite found poems tend to: (a) blend senses a little; (b) sound like a cute little daydream, like ts eliot or james thurber or guy who wrote phantom tollbooth (@tokyohanna)

I love all of these, by the way, and they have shaped how I see and select the found poems that make it to the Twitter stream. Thank you so much to everyone who contributed their point of view!

First exercise into answering this question is categorizing what I consider to be the most successful found poems collected by Found Twitter Poems over the first year by the type of poetic device used.

A caveat:  Quality is a subjective measure, and so necessarily this entire exercise lacks pretty much any measure of science in it.  I took my 62 favorites from the first year and just categorized that list.

Also, I don’t know how successful this exercise will be.  I wonder if “success” or “quality” would be better evaluated on a gut feeling… It’s like pornography — we just know a poem when we see it.  Who knows.  We’ll see what happens.

Here’s the resulting list of categories, listed in rough descending order of frequency, with selected examples of each:

Imagery

1. my dreams are on demand (rt @sfj)
2. Overnight, the moths have come. (rt @plummo)
3. continuing to accelerate (rt @faris)
4. white girls with pitch black hair. (rt @dropthelime)
5. Your fingers are now unbent and un-in-love. You were always so resistant. (rt @IlllllllllllllI)

Metaphor and simile

1. I hate the taste of olives. They taste like ambition. (rt @CLNFRQHR)
2. …my dreads smell like youth (rt @justbrad)
3. And the sky, for the life of me it looks like a wet newspaper or else its just too cold to hold colour in its cheeks (rt @jensenwilder)
4. You are asparagus. (rt @kate_mckean)
5. I feel like an expensive Russian hooker. (rt @darrellwhitelaw)

Hyperbole

1. My battery is dying. My state is beyond dying. (rt @schmindi)
2. nostradamus said thered be days like this… (rt @jnafman)
3. When I have daughters, I’m going to shake their boyfriends’ hands so hard. (rt @chrismacho)
4. infinite number of fancy watches (rt @MichaelSurtees)
5. I am everywhere! where are you? (rt @themichaeladams)

Lists

1. alley way balcony, cigar, Estrella, friends and bros, summer warmth, and Barcelona in the air… (rt @shullovox)
2. A parliament of ninjas, a murder of mafiosos, a flock of vampires (rt @bastholm)
3. Leaves dropping from the trees, chimney pots, mill stone, mist falling into the valley, church spire, sun breaking cloud. (rt @thespyglass)

Word play

1. freckled fingers (rt @Rebecca_Allison)
2. last nite there was a bruiseparty on my body & my shins were slam dancing with walls & my feet pogoed w/ cheesegraters (rt @sea_of_shoes)
3. uncomfortablepants (rt @kylehugall)

Absurdisms

1. Mimsy goes wobblsy wobblsy. (rt @completelydark)
2. Today I bake with chunks of perhapsness. (rt @ibogost)
3. I could drizzle her anguish over pancakes right now it tastes so good. (rt @JulianRubbish)

Metaphysical and mystic

1. The world has secret places, behind every line of trees… (rt @greenilocks)
2. Powdery snow…glittering against the mercury vapor lights. Flickers, flurries, fluid dynamics: the universe. (rt @finnb)
3. i am an emotional creature: the secret life of girls around the world (rt @oneonethreefour)

Personification

1. The statue of liberty is crying gravy tears. (rt @DontBlameEmeka)
2. This milkshake is supposed to have eight kinds of chocolate in it, but all I can taste is sadness. (rt @aedison)

Juxtaposition

1. hot date awaits me in the frozen foods aisle… (rt @hermeygirl)
2. Three year relationship destroyed over slice of cheesecake. (rt @miishi)

Apostrophe

1. Dear world. I can’t stop having fun and I also happen to look fantastic today. Lots of love, Thomas (rt @teoconnell)
2. Stop waving back, I’m drowning. (rt @xDarkPoeticx)

My baby, Found Twitter Poems, turns one years old tomorrow, Thursday, June 3, 2010. It’s a modest success publicly — somewhere around 600 followers, if that’s how one measures success these days. But perhaps more importantly, it makes me immeasurably happy, so we’ll count it a success in other areas as well.  I think it is definitely worth trawling around for another year’s worth of found poems.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on what makes a good found poem, and where I’ve has success and (more importantly) failure over the past year.  Please DM me or drop me a line sometime: foundtwitterpoems [AT] gmail [DOT] com

(I’m mulling over a post where I lay out what I think makes a “good” found poem.  It’s tricky to write down hard and fast rules — it’s the eye of the beholder, after all.  If you say something is a poem, then, well, it is.  But I have certain things that I’m looking for, and it can’t hurt to try and write them down all in one place.  More on that soon.)

To celebrate a whole year of finding Twitter poems, I’m republishing my favorites from the past year.  (n.b. It’s a completely subjective list that only reflects my own personal taste.  Please don’t take it as a ranking of objective quality or poetic-ness or anything like that — who could have the hubris to say they could make such a list?)

I didn’t give myself a number limit.  I wanted to test my editorial prowess throughout the year, and see how many poems still hold up to my own high level of scrutiny — even with the benefit of some distance and hindsight.  I ended up with 62 in the end, out of somewhere around 1100 that I originally published in the first year.  That’s a lot.  Or perhaps not enough.  Also, it’s a 5% rate of awesomeness, which sounds about right to me.

These 62 favorites will be retweeted over the course of the next couple of days, each with the #FTP1yr hashtag.  Or you can check them out here, by chronological date of original publication on FTP:

1. I tell time by how far the homeless guy is in his morning calisthenics. I’m late. (rt @epakurar)
2. Topshop is a sea of sequins and tourists. Like a Cher-themed hell. (rt @nicolebrett)
3. If I eat any more of those Cadbury Nutties, I’ll surely get sick. Ok, maybe one more… (rt @satishk)
4. Every once in a while I look around the New York subway and we all just look like kids playing dress up. (rt @aarondignan)
5. He deployed his reserves, and watered her plants (rt @Reckon)
6. continuing to accelerate (rt @faris)
7. I hate the taste of olives. They taste like ambition. (rt @CLNFRQHR)
8. Need to unlearn everything my mother inadvertently taught me about love. (rt @Neishababee)
9. You are asparagus. (rt @kate_mckean)
10. i ran like a madwoman. or, rather, i ran not to become one. (rt @andjelicaaa)
11. alley way balcony, cigar, Estrella, friends and bros, summer warmth, and Barcelona in the air… (rt @shullovox)
12. I don’t know what was more surprising – the location, the fruit or the eating. (rt @missdaisyfrost)
13. sundresses collect dust. flip flops futile. bikinis beckon, freckles fade. hot toddy beats margarita. summer of my discontent (rt @askpiper)
14. Beginning to understand pine trees. (rt @gbezanson)
15. Overnight, the moths have come. (rt @plummo)
16. The statue of liberty is crying gravy tears. (rt @DontBlameEmeka)
17. I feel like an expensive Russian hooker. (rt @darrellwhitelaw)
18. Dear world. I can’t stop having fun and I also happen to look fantastic today. Lots of love, Thomas (rt @teoconnell)
19. Train full of anger. (rt @jacqtress)
20. If i was a fruit I’d be perfectly ripe….. (rt @MissHavard)
21. I think I am invisible actually. I don’t see me. Am I here? (rt @Janet_Reid)
22. nostradamus said thered be days like this… (rt @jnafman)
23. Last night was the leaf-killing rain… (rt @jessamyn)
24. uncomfortablepants (rt @kylehugall)
25. i like your thin people crackers. am i invisible yet? (rt @jesskimball)
26. …my dreads smell like youth (rt @justbrad)
27. do you even exist? (rt @davidmoldawer)
28. Leaves dropping from the trees, chimney pots, mill stone, mist falling into the valley, church spire, sun breaking cloud. (rt @thespyglass)
29. Mimsy goes wobblsy wobblsy. (rt @completelydark)
30. Stop waving back, I’m drowning. (rt @xDarkPoeticx)
31. Nothing spoils the taste of peanut butter like someone’s unfounded ego. (rt @IanSohn)
32. Would much rather be 5’10″ of judgment. (rt @katerbee)
33. A parliament of ninjas, a murder of mafiosos, a flock of vampires (rt @bastholm)
34. When all else fails, cleanse it with fire. (rt @ideawhore)
35. I could drizzle her anguish over pancakes right now it tastes so good. (rt @JulianRubbish)
36. This milkshake is supposed to have eight kinds of chocolate in it, but all I can taste is sadness. (rt @aedison)
37. last nite there was a bruiseparty on my body & my shins were slam dancing with walls & my feet pogoed w/ cheesegraters (rt @sea_of_shoes)
38. And the sky, for the life of me it looks like a wet newspaper or else its just too cold to hold colour in its cheeks (rt @jensenwilder)
39. I would have broken the rules for you.. (rt @Ameliarrrrrose)
40. My battery is dying. My state is beyond dying. (rt @schmindi)
41. Powdery snow…glittering against the mercury vapor lights. Flickers, flurries, fluid dynamics: the universe. (rt @finnb)
42. my dreams are on demand (rt @sfj)
43. Today I bake with chunks of perhapsness. (rt @ibogost)
44. In daytime I’m paper, at night I’m ink. This is why I can only work at dusk… (rt @porousborders)
45. Three year relationship destroyed over slice of cheesecake. (rt @miishi)
46. white girls with pitch black hair. (rt @dropthelime)
47. The world has secret places, behind every line of trees… (rt @greenilocks)
48. I am everywhere! where are you? (rt @themichaeladams)
49. hot date awaits me in the frozen foods aisle… (rt @hermeygirl)
50. When I have daughters, I’m going to shake their boyfriends’ hands so hard. (rt @chrismacho)
51. I don’t think I need to try any new fruit. I’ve had enough different kinds for now. (rt @michaeljordan)
52. My whole body is buzzing… it’s light past supper-time. I’m a rocket, I’m a cymbal, I’m a predator. (rt @elisabethblack)
53. two days till new york. two days till i make sense again. (rt @chreewashere)
54. a secret magical attic on Water Street. I want to live there forever. (rt @tokyohanna)
55. Mean girls disguised as nice girls (rt @mzjlee)
56. Your fingers are now unbent and un-in-love. You were always so resistant. (rt @IlllllllllllllI)
57. like a spy thriller. dark overcast , long shadows , bentleys oyster bar. (rt @paulwoolmington)
58. i am an emotional creature: the secret life of girls around the world (rt @oneonethreefour)
59. infinite number of fancy watches (rt @MichaelSurtees)
60. Poetry is a very dangerous word. (rt @tomwaits)
61. freckled fingers (rt @Rebecca_Allison)
62. My skinny caterwauling baby is a broad, burly kid now. But the sound of the surf still lulls him to sleep… (rt @Caissie)

It’s often necessary to put a label on what you do for a living — it’s a shorthand way for people to know how to relate to you, what your experience is, whether they should hire you, etc.  But it seems there are a ton of names for many overlapping, not-fully-formed disciplines.

I’m picking the label that has the most resonance for me, that I think encompasses my experience set — communications planning.

And here’s what I mean when I say “communications planning”:

Communications planning is an umbrella term — how do you coordinate and integrate all of the communications for a given brand in order to solve a particular business problem?

(If everything communicates — from package design, to customer service, word-of-mouth, advertising, and so many more — then this is a very broad mandate.)

It encompasses…

• - what you say (traditional account planning)
• - where you say it (channel planning)
• - when and how you say it (engagement or connections planning)
• - the need for a non-linear narrative (transmedia planning)
• - that other people can be powerful advocates (propogation planning)

Other terms could work as a catch-all for these things — integrated marketing planning, I suppose, or IMC planning?

I don’t love the term “360-degree planning” — it implies that any communications channel could be used for a given campaign.  The reality is exactly the opposite.  A good communication strategy will necessarily put guardrails on which channels should be used.  It’s more about picking the right 30 degrees, rather than plastering a piece of creative in any place that will hold it.

Here’s the problem though:  I see a ton of people with the title “communications planner” — and most of them don’t really do all (or any?) of the things listed above.  It’s basically become a fancy term for a standard-issue media planner.  When Jason Oke took issue with communications planning last fall, it was for this reason.

Maybe because of this, the term “communications planning” will be dragged under by the sheer weight of confusion and mis-attribution, and I won’t call myself a communications planner in the future.

But for now, that’s where the stake lies.

Found on the concrete ground just past the exit turnstiles, before the stairs, of the Vandam Street exit of the downtown-bound C train (Spring Street stop).

I’d love to know the story behind this scene…

Who prints a nice note like that on their computer rather than writing it by hand?  And why were there multiple copies of the note on the ground, rather than just one?

The roses had been trampled by hundreds of commuters by the time I got there.