Soon, sooner than most of us 

posters, scrollers, refreshers 
and general internet lurkers 
would like, Twitter is going to 
up its character count to 280 — 
double the current limit. And 
while that increases potential 
for 
memes 
and 
political 

screaming, 
it 
also 
affects 

a community of poets who 
use Twitter as their primary 

means of publication.

When Twitter first appeared 

on the web 11 years ago it was 
a space to talk about what you 
ate for breakfast. About 2011, 
people started to toss around 
the idea that the website might 
actually be — like most other 
text-based media before it — 
literary. That maybe it was 
possible to fit art, and more 
specifically 
poetry, 
within 

Twitter’s 
humble 
character 

limit. 
Poets 
established 
in 

print took to the site to be 
playful and human — to point 

out, with the sincerity of early 
internet culture, the beauty 
in toast and jam and bowls of 
cereal.

Poets like Mary Karr and 

Sherman 
Alexie 
used 
the 

platform to send blips of beauty 
into the web and to reaffirm 
a kind of canonical body — 
retweeting and quoting poetry 
from other, equally established 
poets. Poetry on Twitter was, 
in many ways, merely the 
transposition of pre-existing 
words.

For some poets, that kind 

of literary Twitter was more 
a means to talk about poetry 
than one to create it. Because 
the site, and specifically this 
sub-community, maintained a 
false air of professionalism and 
careerism, it became an echo 
chamber to reaffirm what was 
already established offline.

The internet was growing up 

quickly and it was becoming 
more and more apparent that 
instead of just a new platform, 
it was a new world that could 

house art and inspire it. From 
this world, a generation of 
posters and poets was born.

There has been resurgence 

in Twitter as a platform for 
organic and original creation. 
The origins of the alt-lit online 
community — which started 
on Tumblr and Twitter in 2011 
and came into its own as those 
platforms did, about 2014.

Alt-lit is literature on the 

internet that is a direct product 
of internet culture. In its earlier 
stages, it was poetry that was 
stylized to look internet-y — 

chat room messages, Facebook 
statuses, lowercase letters and 
abbreviations abound. It was 
characterized by a proximity 
to the “New Sincerity” literary 
movement that includes IRL 
writers 
like 
David 
Foster 

Wallace and Miranda July.

Online, 
poets 
like 
Steve 

Roggenbuck 
and 
Mira 

Gonzalez rose to prominence. 
Early on, they blurred the 
lines between self-deprecating 
observation 
and 
more 

traditionally 
recognizable 

poetry.

Both poets still use Twitter, 

as well as traditional print, 
as a means of spreading their 
poetry to the masses and 
bridging the gap between what 
can roughly be characterized 
as alt-lit and post-alt-lit. Yes, 
now, it’s a movement that 
is established enough to be 
considered in a post phase. 
Still alt, still lit, just post what 
it was before.

Like all the great “post”s, 

this iteration of internet poetry 

is interested in what poetry is 
as a concept and an institution. 
It’s funnier, sharper, more 
cynical and nihilistic.

Popular accounts intersperse 

their verse with memes and 
retweets from “weird Twitter” 
accounts like @dril. 

This brand of poetry is post 

New Sincerity’s rejection of 
postmodernism’s 
cynicism, 

which is just a convoluted way 
of saying it’s cynical again. 
But, cynical in a different 
way, a way that knows how to 
spin multiple plates — beauty, 

despair, self-deprecation, self-
love — all at once.

On Twitter, users like @

atreewithagrape 
and 
@

simulacra1990 and @RAF_i_A 
blend 
memes, 
political 

retweets and small lines of 
verse into poetic and holistic 
expressions of the self. Profiles 
are often devoid of real names, 
photos or other points of 
identification. Poets are known 
by their handles in a

“At home, there’s this little 

coffee shop … our friend owns 
it … his dad used to own it but 
he passed it down to his son, 
and his son is super chill and 
he’s like, ‘We need to start 
throwing 
shows 
here.’ 
So 

we threw a show,” said Alex 
Stoitsiadis, lead singer of a 
local Ann Arbor band, Dogleg, 
which also includes Chase 
Macinski on bass and Parker 
Grissom on drums.

“It went over really well. 

And then we threw another 
show at the end of summer and 
like 200 people showed up. In 
this little coffee shop, they all 
just piled in. And it was one 
of the craziest nights of our 
lives.”

It’s 
hard 
to 
describe 

exactly 
what 
the 
people 

in 
that 
impromptu 
venue 

heard when they saw Dogleg 
perform for the first time. 
As a band, they’ve developed 
a sound that’s difficult to 
pin down. A blend of driving 
energy, powerful vocals and 
instrumentation that leaves 
you speechless, Dogleg’s music 
dares you to try and neatly 

categorize it. The rush of color 
and catharsis that burst to 
life in that little coffee shop 
must have shaken the very 
foundations of the building: 
an aftermath of toppled-over 
chairs and cracked coffee cups.

It’s not surprising in the 

least to hear that such a large 
crowd came to watch the 
second performance.

The different elements in 

each of Dogleg’s songs are 
unrestrained, allowing their 
two albums to spark with a 

distinct dynamism. Songs are 
almost like scrapbooks in the 
way they are pieced together. 
“Star 
67” 
from 
Remember 

Alderaan? hangs off the edge 
of 
spiking 
crescendos 
and 

jagged vocals. The mellow 
intro of “11 AM Drunk” from 
Dogleg trips into a racing 
tempo that jolts toward the 
finish line. Untraditional but 
not amateurish, irregular but 
not haphazard, it’s art that is 
redefined.

It’s DIY.
Even 
though 
this 
very 

broad label can encompass a 
variety of different aspects, 
the importance of DIY comes 
in the fact that, at its core, 
it allows art to be malleable, 
deconstructing the unyielding 
stone 
of 
more 
traditional 

definitions in order for people 
to create their own systems of 
production. DIY is art at its 
most accessible and ingenuity 
at its finest. Still-life paintings 
can be made out of instant 
coffee and water. Movies can 
be filmed in backyards.

Music can be recorded in 

basements.

“Dogleg 
was 
just 
me, 

initially,” 
Stoitsiadis 
said 

as he explained the band’s 
beginning. 
“The 
friend 
of 

mine who was in the old band 
let me borrow his recording 
equipment, which was literally 
just a little box that could 
record two microphones at a 
time.

It wasn’t music production 

in the conventional sense, but 
it worked.

“I would just record stuff on 

there and just kind of make it 
as good as possible … just kind 
of working with the limits,” he 
said.

Even 
with 
limitations, 

Stoitsiadis found the feedback 
he 
received 
after 
publicly 

releasing his music to be 
overwhelmingly positive.

“I didn’t really expect (the 

music) to go anywhere,” he 
said. “I threw it out online 
and pretty soon people were 
really liking it a lot and I was 
like, ‘I should start playing 
shows. I should start actually 
mobilizing this thing.’”

Dogleg 
emerged 
from 

the inconspicuous form of a 
piece of borrowed recording 
equipment; 
Stoitsiadis’s 

ingenuity 
and 
passion 

empowered his music to grow 
into the established band it is 
today.

“My old friends, we went to 

music school together: School 
of Rock,” he said. “So I called 
them up … they’re itching 
to play in a band. So, we get 
together and everything just 
gels completely. We’re all on 
the same exact page as to what 
we want to do, where we want 
to go, how we want to sound 
and things just exponentially 
took off from there.”

Yet, even as Dogleg continue 

to branch out, the band never 
strays too far from Stoitsiadis’s 
original 
means 
of 
music 

production.

“I would go and write five 

different riff or song ideas, 
just in one day,” he explained. 
“And then the next day I would 
come back to them and see 
what can I change, what can I 
put together, what can I piece 
apart.”

It’s a casual process.
Even when writing vocals, 

the 
component 
that 
gives 

Stoitsiadis the most trouble 
during the creation of new

2B —Thursday, September 28, 2017
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

COURTESY OF SHANNON MAHONEY

COURTESY OF BEN LESER

Dogleg is a on-campus band really into DIY

B-SIDE LEAD

Dogleg digs up power of at 
-home recording and DIY

Local University band Dogleg has perfected the art of DIY 
having made it a part of their image and mode of production

SHIMA SADAGHIYANI

Daily Arts Writer

See DOGLEG, Page 3B

140 characters 

(sometimes more, often 

less)

B-SIDE SECONDARY

MADELEINE GAUDIN

Senior Arts Editor

See TWITTER, Page 3B