Is The F***ing Epic Twitter Quest of @MayorEmanuel The First Epic Twitter Poem?

Well, according to this article from The Economist, it just might be. While the links between poetry and Twitter are many, as evidenced by this , this and other stories, this article marks a (perhaps) first in looking at Twitter's possibilities beyond the 140 character constraint. To do so, the author uses the now famous example of Dan Sinker's fake Twitter account for Mayor Rahm Emanuel, which trended like crazy during the time of his election and is now available as a book.

From the article:

IT BEGAN as a lark. Dan Sinker, a professor of journalism at Columbia College in Chicago, started a fake Twitter feed called @MayorEmanuel. It was September 27th 2010 and rumours had been circulating that Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, would run for mayor of Chicago. Mr Sinker’s profanity-laced tweets quickly spread (the real Emanuel has a notoriously foul mouth). Over the next five months these tiny missives would morph into a complex, engrossing and even lyrical narrative. The feed featured major and minor characters, including David Axelrod and Carl The Intern. It was suspenseful—would Mr Emanuel be removed from the ballot due to a residency rule?—and full of conflict. And Mr Sinker created a powerful sense of place. The story is as much about Chicago (and snow) as it is about its native sons. Celery salt, a main ingredient in Chicago cuisine, is a symbol in @MayorEmanuel’s climactic scene with Mayor Daley on the top of City Hall. Indeed, @MayorEmanuel may be the first truly great piece of digital literary work.

Then, later, the author delves into the form that the Tweets eventually took, while trying to conceptualize "what" they are:

How did Mr Sinker take a form conducive to ephemeral quips and create a fully realised work of fiction? He used the best tropes of Twitter: he responded to actual events in real time, he spaced his tweets out to parallel our lived experience, and he altered his feed to respond to reader reactions. (Quaxelrod, a duck @MayorEmanuel befriends while on an ice floe in the Chicago River—yes, the events are absurd—was meant as a “one off” tweet but was so popular that Mr Sinker developed him into a regular character). Mr Sinker understands how language works on Twitter. All his posts are self-contained, complete in and of themselves. (“Quaxelrod is clearly angling for a news anchor gig, with all his feathered fucking showboating on these debate prep questions.”)

But what catapults @MayorEmanuel into art is its conclusion. Unlike most of what happens on Twitter, and online generally, @MayorEmanuel has a resolution. Mr Sinker decided early on that he would have a clear, determinate ending. Once the real Mr Emanuel wins the election, @MayorEmanuel is sucked into a time vortex (there cannot be two Mayor Emanuels, after all) and becomes invisible. “And I can see myself starting to fade out, and I hear Axelrod whispering the fucking Kaddish quietly to himself, tears streaming.” It is over the top and maybe a bit sophomoric still, but the pathos is real. By giving us an ending, Mr Sinker satisfies our growing longing for closure in the infinite sprawl of the web.

So what should we call this new literary form, this Twitter narrative? The closest non-digital literary analogy is epic poetry, as the book’s title alludes. The main character is a flawed man who encounters obstacles in pursuit of glory. Aside from the constant cursing, the language is poetically economical and referential.