Summary

The speaker welcomes the reader to Facebook, a platform that feels like a high school reunion with no beginning or end. All your old friends and lovers are here, and the present moment is not as important as everything that has come before. This way, you get to live in childhood forever, relieving the embarrassments and victories of your youth. Even your search for spiritual enlightenment is open for all to see. Everyone can come together in loneliness and isolation.

Analysis

“The Facebook Sonnet,” as implied in the title, uses a traditional sonnet form which shares many common elements with the more formal English sonnet. In this poem, there is an overlying tone of irony through which the speaker creates a seductive and fractured image of social media. They open by directly welcoming the reader to an “endless high-school / Reunion” (Lines 1-2) in which...