We at The Local try to provide a rich pastiche of news, commentary and creativity. The work of one of our community contributors, Brendan Bernhard, the author of “East Village Tweets”, has quickly gained a wide following.
Readers have found Mr. Bernhard’s work humorous, evocative, poetic, and quintessentially of the East Village.
In an e-mail exchange with The Local, Mr. Bernhard shared some insights about how he works and what moves him to write (he also passed along a photo of the dog that inspired one of his most popular “tweets,” “A Serious Mutt“):
“I am a journalist but poetry has always been my first love. I started these ‘tweets’ – they’re not real tweets, of course – because I had begun writing for this blog and wondered if I could come up with something a different which would allow me to express my feelings about the East Village. As it turns out, I have ranged from the fantastical to the concrete and various shades in between. It’s been great fun for me, it has made me look at my neighborhood in a different way (I’m practically thinking in tweets) and I hope at least a few of them have resonated with readers.”
If your comments are any indication, they have:
Leslie Monsour wrote:
“These are a new kind of super contemporary baroque haiku. Very amusing. I could go on reading.”
Marilyn Widrow said:
“Brendan has captured the essence of the East Village through imagery, poetry and sheer beauty. I feel its pulse beat.”
Janet offered:
“I don’t live in the East Village or even in Manhattan, but it’s a treat to read such elegant, evocative poesy. Please, may we have more?”
brenda cullerton asked:
“who is this furtive genius roaming around my favorite streets? The David Markson of Tweets, that’s who he is.”
“West of Broadway” said:
“These are lovely, smart, funny, delightfully observant and far more intelligent than one has a right to expect from the form. Call it poetweetery.”
Join the conversation: Have you seen other attempts at a similar form? What about the East Village does Mr. Bernhard’s poetweetery evoke for you?