"But if you saw the post on Facebook, why didn't like it?"
A close friend of mine is a painter. Whenever we talk, she tells me about her paintings and shows them to me, and I don't have much to say apart from sharing with her the feelings that her paintings convey to me. I don't know much about visual arts. It's not my forte. However, I appreciate artists in all fields, and her in particular. Her knowledge and enthusiasm for everything related to painting are contagious, and I get excited about any painting if she is excited about it.
For several months, she told me that she wanted to make a change regarding her art and start a new path with it. I was very happy for her. I thought the change she wanted to make was right and logical, and I wished her to realize it soon.
One day, I was scrolling through Facebook without a definite goal. During my wandering, all kinds of posts popped up on the screen: memes, photos of friends, political posts, all kinds. Among the posts, for a split second, I saw her post. The post passed me by so quickly that I barely read it. From a quick skim through the post, I realized that she made the change she intended, but I wasn't focused. I saw the post and immediately kept scrolling without commenting or even pressing the like button.
A few days later, when we spoke on the phone, I told her I saw the post and wished her good luck. She thanked me and told me she was very excited, but a few minutes later, she asked me:
"But if you saw the post on Facebook, why didn't like it?"
Why didn't I?
Caught in the Web
I don't think I'm the outlier regarding what I shared above. We all scroll through Facebook and Instagram and don't always notice what we see. Sometimes, I can find myself remembering a post I saw two days ago, and only now I recollect what I saw. I'm sure you also don't comment or like every post you see, even if you've read it to the end.
A few weeks ago, my wife told me that one of her colleagues follows me on Facebook and reads my poems. "He asked me to tell you that he reads everything you write but doesn't like to comment or like on Facebook." I didn't even bother asking her why because I knew I had a lot of readers like that. I call them "transparent readers" because I have no way of knowing whether they have read my poems. If someone reads a poem of mine on Facebook and doesn't like or comment, I'll never know they've read it.
It always surprises me how difficult it is to click the "like" button, let alone form a coherent sentence in the comments. I always remind myself that for someone to choose to like something I wrote on Facebook or Instagram, they have to be very passionate about what I wrote. Sometimes, it's hard for me to digest that if I posted a poem on social media that was only "okay" and not "wow," the chances of someone commenting on it are zero.
Beyond that, as I wrote in the previous post, I learned a long time ago that Facebook and Instagram encourage particular poems, usually concise, simple, and direct. Only poems of this type get dozens or hundreds of likes.
This fact makes me ask myself:
Is a long poem necessarily worse than a short poem?
Is a complex poem requiring a second and third reading to understand worse than a simple and straightforward poem?
Is a poem that waits before conveying its message and takes the time and patience with the readers any worse than a poem that goes straight to the point?
And when I really think about it, I realize that the answers are clear: no, no, and no!
So maybe it's better not to insist on Facebook?
I have been posting my poetry on Facebook for almost six years. Over those years, I have published dozens of poems on Facebook and Instagram. There is something about posting poems on Facebook that is very pleasant. The notification I get on my phone every time my poem receives a new comment or a new like sends a rush of adrenaline through my body. After I post a poem, I find myself opening Facebook dozens of times an hour, waiting to see if someone has responded to it. Sometimes, this compulsion lasts for several days.
Facebook makes me kind of a junky.
It shouldn't be like this.
As a writer who wants to publicize his poetry, of course, it's nice to know that people are reading what I write, but I know that you can't measure the quality of poems by the number of likes and comments you receive. This unaccounted desire is a recipe for disappointment and is simply factually incorrect.
A short anecdote: last summer, I published a collection of five poems called "Five Poems of Drought." It is clear to me that these are some of my better poems. I am sure of that. However, each of them received less than ten likes. Does this mean that these poems are less good? I do not think so.
I'm not trying to tell you not to post your poems on Facebook or Instagram. All I'm trying to say is that you should try to take the whole matter of comments and likes with a grain of salt because this is a deceptive measure.
Breaking through the virtual wall
One of the ways to overcome this alienation that social media creates is to read your poetry in front of a live audience. There are many poetry events In Israel and the US today that attract a broad audience. As I said in the previous post, you and I have a tremendous opportunity to bring our poetry in front of the audience directly, thus truly discovering how much our poems can affect people.
The truth must be told: poetry reading events usually cannot make your poetry go viral. The chance of you going viral because you read a poem at a poetry reading, is minimal. Unlike Facebook, where you can share your poems with the click of a button, at a poetry reading event, your poems will meet the audience present at the event and no one else. However, your connection with the audience will be deeper and much more meaningful.
So, if you feel that you are ready to read your poetry in front of an audience and want to experience what I described in this post, I invite you all to a poetry reading workshop I am holding on March 17th, 2024, between 7:00-8:30 PM (Jerusalem time). This workshop is a one-time, one-and-a-half-hour workshop where we will talk about everything necessary in reading poetry: how to stand on stage, how to prepare beforehand, how to choose the right poems, and many more tips that will make you great poetry readers.
Register here:
The workshop will be entirely in Hebrew. Poetry-reading workshops in English are scheduled for later this year. Stay tuned!
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