Inspiration?

People sometimes talk about the internet (and technology in general) as if it were a bad thing; that it contributes to the general illiteracy of the population. I'm sorry, but I don't agree. When I was a kid, the same arguments were made about television, and before that, about movies or comic books or dime novels...Whatever the new thing was, it was obviously bad news for education, for attention span, for vocabulary, and even the physical well-being of children.

Now, I don't pretend to have proven anything scientifically, and it may well be that there are some bad effects that are traceable to our more recent gadgets. However, the alarmists of our generation may not have it all correct either. Case in point: Facebook Notes. In the past week or so, I have been subjected to an inordinate number of Facebook Notes requests. All of these ask you to copy the message, delete the previous person's answers and insert your own--then tag your friends and pass the task on to them. One could spend one's days simply replying to these requests--if one had the time to spare--and then, reading the results. Who doesn't have a little curiosity about their friends' responses to some random personal questions? 

This week, I have been researching writing prompts--ways to get kids to write poetry--for the simple reason that I am doing a couple of poetry workshops for middle school students. One of the ways I ran across was something called 'automatic' poems. The rationale behind this (grossly oversimplified here) is to give the kids a template and have them fill in the blanks.  At the same time I was reading about this method, I serendipitously received the Facebook request that asked you to Google your own name plus the word "needs", copy the first ten hits and post the document on your Notes page.

Well...to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And to a woman with a poetry workshop, this looked like an automatic poem. I tried it, and, you know, it didn't turn out badly. Now I'm looking at everything that comes over my Facebook transom in a slightly different light. Could I make a poem out of the "One Word" request? What about the BBC Book list? Or the Six Line Memoir? Who knows but that technology in the form of Facebook is presenting me with an endless source of inspiration? Who knows what other gadgets and so-called "time-wasters" might provide? This might even provide an entry into writing for the sixth-graders I'm tasked with inspiring. Anything's possible... I'm optimistic.

And for those of you who might be interested..the poem's on my Notes page...