Today is Day 11 of Author Amok's 2015 poem-a-day project.
We are spending February writing in response to sounds.
For a full description of the project and how to participate, please read this post. I hope you'll join us. I'll continue posting poems from Day 11 as they come in.
Our Day 11 prompt was a typewriter.
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| For sale! Vintage Olivetti typewriter from the 1960s. $375 at Chairish. |
Check out the great wordplay in Patricia VanAmburg's poem today.
Stereo Type
By Patricia VanAmburg
Typewriter man
Words in a can
Talks like tin
Bleeds like sin
Cylinder burns
Small returns
Small returns
Cylinder burns
Bleeds like sin
Talks like tin
Words in a can
Typewriter man
Mr. Samuel Clemens
bought a typewriter
when no one else had one.
Those who received a
typed letter from him
were more interested
in the hows and whys
of it, than in his words.
He stopped typing letters,
instead he wrote novels and
had someone else type them.
Mr. Samuel Clemens
was a writer, after all,
not a typewriter salesman.
Diane Mayr of Random Noodling has a poem about Mark Twain.
Early Adopter Adapts
by Diane Mayr
by Diane Mayr
Mr. Samuel Clemens
bought a typewriter
when no one else had one.
Those who received a
typed letter from him
were more interested
in the hows and whys
of it, than in his words.
He stopped typing letters,
instead he wrote novels and
had someone else type them.
Mr. Samuel Clemens
was a writer, after all,
not a typewriter salesman.
Diane also sent in this Youtube video about the Boston Typewriter Orchestra, a group she has seen perform!
Charles Waters' poem is a fitting accompaniment to the typewriter orchestra video.
TYPEWRITER
Plastic/metallic husks
Hold an orchestra of
Rhythmic finger punches.
(c) Charles Waters 2015 all rights reserved.
And welcome to Mike Ratcliffe, who's joining us for the first time today. Mike blogs at Michael Ratcliffe's Poetry.
EIGHTY WORDS PER MINUTE
by Michael Ratcliffe
I learned the value of precision
in the sound of eighty words per minute,
the bell signaling each line’s end
and the left hand to action,
levering the platen’s return.
Mother could type faster, but she knew
there is a tradeoff between accuracy and speed,
with little room for margins of error.
I learned to plan ahead,
place a pencil mark near the bottom
of the sheet to know when the last line
on the page was reached.
I learned patience and the value
of not going too fast
when replacing the ribbon,
guiding it to the other spool—
efficiency sometimes means slowing down.
I learned to love words proofreading
the legal documents she typed,
their structured forms,
their mix of English and Latin,
black and white, precision and logic,
impressed onto each page
at eighty words per minute,
thousands of words now worth
more to me than any picture.
I learned the value of precision
in the sound of eighty words per minute,
the bell signaling each line’s end
and the left hand to action,
levering the platen’s return.
Mother could type faster, but she knew
there is a tradeoff between accuracy and speed,
with little room for margins of error.
I learned to plan ahead,
place a pencil mark near the bottom
of the sheet to know when the last line
on the page was reached.
I learned patience and the value
of not going too fast
when replacing the ribbon,
guiding it to the other spool—
efficiency sometimes means slowing down.
I learned to love words proofreading
the legal documents she typed,
their structured forms,
their mix of English and Latin,
black and white, precision and logic,
impressed onto each page
at eighty words per minute,
thousands of words now worth
more to me than any picture.
I got caught up in one of my obsessions with this sound prompt, everyone. It started when I was talking with my teen about Japanese anime shows. Wait a minute. Japanese isn't based on a limited system of letters, the way English is. How does a Japanese typewriter work?
You can read a full description here. I'll post a video after my poem.
Typing in Japanese
By Laura Shovan
Thousands of kanji
reduced
to one metal tray
of symbols.
The typist
moves this
contraption
as if it were
a Ouija board—
handle floating
above kanji
until it pauses
above one
character—strikes.
Ink is impressed
on page.
The typist
is a bird
hunting, pecking
in a forest.
To him, our
twenty-six letters
seem a simple
glade of meaning.
Here are all of the sound prompts for the second week of February:
The Sound of Waves
A Bubbling Cauldron
Fireworks
Classic Typewriter
Saturday, February 14: Recommended by Buffy Silverman.
If you'd like some poem-starters to wake up your muse, you'll find them at the bottom of this post. Drop in any time with a poem. I’ll continue to post your work throughout the month, no matter which sound you are writing in response to.
If you’d like to read what we’ve written so far, here are links to the week 1 poems:
Read Water Wheel Poems by Laura Shovan, Margaret Simon, Diane Mayr, Linda Baie, Patricia VanAmburg, and Charles Waters.
Read Angel Chimes Poems by Diane Mayr, Margaret Simon, Laura Shovan, Linda Baie, Patricia VanAmburg, and Charles Waters.
Read Knife Sharpening Poems by Diane Mayr, Linda Baie, Margaret Simon, Laura Shovan, Charles Waters, and Patricia VanAmburg.
Read Thunderstorm Poems by Margaret Simon, Diane Mayr, Patricia VanAmburg, Laura Shovan, Linda Baie, and Charles Waters.
Read Ballet poems by Diane Mayr, Margaret Simon, Laura Shovan, Patricia VanAmburg, and Charles Waters.
Read Theremin Poems by Matt Forrest Esenwine, Charles Waters, Patricia VanAmburg, Margaret Simon, Diane Mayr, Laura Shovan, and Buffy Silverman.
Read Endangered Sounds poems by Patricia VanAmburg, Diane Mayr, Linda Baie, Margaret Simon, and Charles Waters.
4 comments:
Laura,
A bit late, but here's my contribution for day 11:
EIGHTY WORDS PER MINUTE
I learned the value of precision
in the sound of eighty words per minute,
the bell signaling each line’s end
and the left hand to action,
levering the platen’s return.
Mother could type faster, but she knew
there is a tradeoff between accuracy and speed,
with little room for margins of error.
I learned to plan ahead,
place a pencil mark near the bottom
of the sheet to know when the last line
on the page was reached.
I learned patience and the value
of not going too fast
when replacing the ribbon,
guiding it to the other spool—
efficiency sometimes means slowing down.
I learned to love words proofreading
the legal documents she typed,
their structured forms,
their mix of English and Latin,
black and white, precision and logic,
impressed onto each page
at eighty words per minute,
thousands of words now worth
more to me than any picture.
Thanks, Mike! I've added your poem to the post.
Michael, I love the ending!
Laura, quite by accident I came across "The Giant Typewriter."
Laura, you certainly captured the complexity of that typewriter!
Thousands of kanji
reduced
to one metal tray
of symbols.
I was hoping the video would show a close-up of the finished document.
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