SMS Poetry

A friend sends beautiful text messages. At least, it seems so to me. I don't have a cell-phone plan that gives me unlimited texts, so I don't use the feature very much. Therefore, it may be commonplace for texts to contain a level of beauty that I find in this particular friend's messages. But I doubt it. Like the rare poet who writes sonnets or vilanelles whose profundity belie the narrow constraints of the form, this man has found ingenious and elegant ways to express his thoughts in the space of a small screen.

I have saved the ones that seem particularly poetic. As I near the limits of my phone's small capacity for storing data, I wonder about anthologizing the texts. This raises some questions. What would be the proper form for publishing them? Would it be best to take a photograph of my cell phone's screen (I'm sure there is also some more technologically complex way of doing this)? Would text messages translate well to the page with their abundance of white space and old-fashioned typography? And would readers appreciate what I see as poetry when they don't receive the message in the same context as I do? Text messages can say a lot in a confined space because they are part of a larger conversation, which may include earlier messages or the long history of a friendship that allows for a certain shorthand made of up inside jokes and other references.

Well, for now I am storing the messages on my phone, until a full inbox makes this project more urgent.

I, Cyborg

Lisa Maruca is coming from Wayne State University to speak tomorrow on cyborgs and technologies of writing and writing instruction. It is a timely talk for me in a number of ways.

First, I've just started reading Seth Lerer, who tells me (in his Chaucer and His Readers) that Stephen Hawes had the rather novel idea near the end of the fifteenth century that the new technology of print would help him achieve the poetic fame that eluded him during his life. In contrast, Hawes's contemporary, John Skelton, never really got into print. He continued to write in an oracular manner and identified with the manuscript tradition rather than embracing the new technologies offered by print. Skelton was the more famous in his time, winning the title of poet laureate, a classical Roman honor that had recently been revived in England. One might expect this story to end with Hawes's revenge on Skelton. Alas, Hawes today is no more known than Skelton (who is, himself, not exactly a household name). But maybe scholars of textual studies will revive his fame, at least among people like me who are interested in the history and cultural significance of books.

Also, a couple nights ago, John Stewart had on a Time reporter whose current cover story involves a plan for saving The Newspaper. Stewart's own plan involves capitalizing on the pleasant feeling one gets from fingering the page and getting newsprint on the fingers. Newspapers need, he says, to make the ink an addictive substance so that people will need to buy more and more papers. This is Maruca's print cyborg-ism in reverse. Instead of a coupling of man and machine whose spawn is the text ("Bodies of Type: The Work of Textual Production in English Printers' Manuals"), man and text join (I've hit a wall on this metaphor, not knowing what results in this except bliss).

I do miss feeling the paper in the morning. I've been picking up the Daily Texan recently, for bus rides. It has a very unsatisfactory lightness, but the pages are still nice. Having free online access is nice, but the ritual of picking the paper off the doorstep and putting it down on the table in front of the bowl of cereal might be worth the subscription.

Audio Lawrence

Attempting to diminish my never-to-be-exhausted store of free credits with audible.com, I've recently downloaded an excellent audiobook version of Lawrence's Sons and Lovers. This may not have been the best choice for quickly getting rid of credits. I've finally made it nearly through part one of two, after over eight hours of listening. At least I'm getting my money's worth.

This particular version is read by Paul Slack, and I would certainly seek out other books read by him. He reads the narration brilliantly, making it easy to follow, and with a nicely Laurentian muscularity, almost spitting out the words intended to emphasize the primal forces of nature and the human body that shape events in the story. And he differentiates the characters' voices very well and effortlessly renders the regional accents.

Since I haven't had many other experiences with Lawrence, I'm trying to listen for what characterizes his writing as "modernist." He is clearly not as experimental with narrative or language as Joyce or Woolf. The story and setting seem to be pure Hardy. But there is a very careful attention to characters' psychology (and unconscious) that you only see taking form but not being fully realized in Hardy. Here it is fully realized, to say the least. Clearly there is the influence of Freud, particularly in the relationships between mother and sons. At times I feel a little uncomfortably transported back into my 18-year-old psyche as I hear about Paul Morel's awkward passion around Miriam. Lawrence's memory of what it is like to be a teenage boy is impressive, and he expresses those mental sensations brilliantly.

The mother also strikes me as a very strong character. The book really seems to be her story, and Lawrence presents it as such, at least at times. After all, the sons are really extensions of her, fulfillments (or not) of the ambitions she once held but had to put aside due to her disappointing marriage. Slack is best as a reader of the audiobook when he is spitting out Mrs. Morel's contempt for her husband or expressing it with barely contained restraint for William's fiance. The passion in these instances suggests very forcefully that Lawrence must have admired or at least been fascinated by this character.