The Poetic Mediums of Mira Gonzalez

Novelist Sheila Heti interviews poet Mira Gonzalez at The Believer Logger. It's a lot about Twitter. "SH: Do you think Twitter is an artform? Do you use it that way?" Well:

MG: Yes, absolutely. I view twitter as an art form as much as I view poetry or fiction as an art form.

SH: To what degree do you think of it as a tool for self-promotion? How about a tool for making friends or building community?

MG: I think it is one of, if not the most important tool for self-promotion that exists in my life currently. Without having Twitter as a way to promote my writing I don’t think I would have gotten published in like 95% of the places I’ve been published. Twitter also seems like one of the single most valuable things in my life for making friends and building community. I have met most of my best friends through Twitter, including my editor Spencer Madsen (@spencermadsen) who published my book, as well as countless people who have been supportive of my writing. I have also discovered a lot of my favorite writers through their twitter accounts.

SH: Is it a poetic medium? Does it allow for poetry?

MG: I would definitely say Twitter is a poetic medium, although the content that I post on Twitter tends to be different from the things I would write in a poem. That’s not to say one is better or more important or ‘less poetic’ than the other. I can express things on Twitter that I wouldn’t feel capable of expressing in a poem, the same way I can express things in a poem that I wouldn’t feel capable of expressing in a short story.

The New Inquiry also has a piece on Gonzalez just up, by Hannah Manshel. "The poetry of Mira Gonzalez, a 22-year-old writer living in Los Angeles, is a paragon of flat writing and ambivalence toward emotion." "But despite this seemingly rich and detailed field of affective experience, Gonzalez still finds her feelings wanting. 'We are craving a certain unachievable density in emotions,' she writes in 'heartbroken people with extreme personality flaws.'"