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.