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Jane Hirshfield and the Poetics of YouTube

Originally Published: July 09, 2010

Believe it or not, lip syncing to Lady Gaga is not the best thing about YouTube. At a panel on "writing in the Internet age" poet Jane Hirshfield suggested that the global Internet phenomena just might be the next big thing in poetry:

"I think we are almost inevitably going to see a high YouTube art form develop, the way the 17th century poet Basho took this game - 17 syllable poems - and took his attention as a poet and human being and turned it into what might be the most widely practiced form of poetry in the world today [haiku]," Hirshfield said.

See for yourself what constitutes “high YouTube art” at The Atlantic.