National Poetry Month 2013: Poetic Form Goes Tech with the Text Sonnet

It's Friday -- the first Poetry Friday of National Poetry Month 2013. Here at Author Amok, we are spending April in the TechnoVerse, that place where poetry and technology intersect.

So far, we've had guest posts from poets Gloson Teh (comparing writing poetry to writing code), Linda Baie (poetry apps for inspiration) and Barbara Morrison (using the writing support program Scrivener for poetry).

It is my good luck to have a tech-savvy teen in the house. Sure, once in a while my sixteen-year-old son is a tech snob. (“Mom, you are NOT getting an iPhone. iPhones are for old people.”) His skills with a computer have come in handy on many occasions.

His skills as a texter make me a target for eye rolls. If I type text messages with my fingers instead of thumbs, I get, “Mom. That is not how you do it.” Then I try thumbs. And auto-correct steps in, with dubious results.

My son doesn't text much any more, but it's how my
13-year-old daughter  communicates with friends
when she's not at school.

Today in the TechnoVerse, poet and educator Scott Slaby combines texting and poetry with a sonnet text-happy teens will appreciate.

Thanks for today’s tour of the TechnoVerse, Scott. (Don’t know what the TechnoVerse is? Read about it here.)

As an educator, I love teachable moments – those times when students have opportunities to learn something about themselves, about the choices they make, about life, and, sometimes, about Art. It’s especially wonderful when teachable moments involve Poetry.

It’s not often, however, that such an opportunity brings together my life as a public high school English teacher and my life as a poet. I often find it difficult to write poems that speak about adolescents and that also appeal to their sensibilities. Such was my intent with the following “text snt,” which was included in the fourth edition of Lewis Putnam Turco’s The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics Including Odd and InventedForms:

“The text sonnet (a.k.a. ‘txt snt’) first appeared in the mid-2000s, when a group of desperate high school seniors sought answers to AP multiple choice practice questions by ‘texting’ messages from their phones to their friends who had completed the questions earlier that day. Their English teacher, Scot Slaby, caught them, gave them zeroes, reported their cheating, and created this ‘txt snt’ to demonstrate the relevance of poetry.”

opN b%k

U need 2 l%k 4 hidN clues ptN
dis hi skool test -- yr wrkz success
depends on l%king for key words witn
d txt 2 help u solve dese problems; gez
agn, ‘ntil u feel ur right @ lst.
U thnk u know d terms bt dey confuz
u. Wonder how yr bud-E evr passed
dis li’l test? U raise yr h&, xQs
yrslf, n hide out ina bthrm stall
2 txt yr (A+) pal. No service? Wlk
bac, 2nd gez yr choices. Woch d wall
n lisN 2 d tckng, tckng clock:
dnt giv^ -- failure wldbe déjà vu:
ll answers r right hre n frnt of u.

Copyright Scott Slaby. Posted with permission of the author. All rights reserved.

Since the poem’s composition, I’ve noticed that many students “text” much more quickly than they used to with their thumbs, minimizing their need for textspeak. Sure, there’s the occasional “r u dare?” (which provides its own poetic opportunities), but most of my students’ “texting” involves proper spelling with a lack of punctuation. On the few occasions I have shared this poem with students, some of them have said that, at first, they find it difficult to read (these are the same students who do their paper writing on their cell phones, thumbing through letters on touchscreen QWERTY keyboards at speeds that stun even the most accomplished typists). 

The QWERTY keyboard dates back to the firstpatented typewriter.

Such difficulty is understandable, but once students slow down and focus on the language, giving themselves over to the textspeak “rules,” they find the sonnet readable enough and can recognize the language at play. After all, these students are not “all thumbs” with language. They communicate very differently from a generation or two before, but they are still curious and inventive, and, in respect to language, they’re inspired by “what’s new or different.” Like any student, they need to be hooked by a poem.

This is where the text sonnet meets them and what they usually take away from reading it -- Poetry is possible with all aspects of language. If the text sonnet has done anything, it has empowered some students to take risks with language while learning its basic rules. Whether some of them find reading the text sonnet to be “cool” or “weird” isn’t what’s important to me; what’s important is that they’re engaged, interested, and talking about language and Poetry, even if it is via text messages with their “bud-E” sitting a few feet away from them.  

For more on textspeak and other odd and invented forms, see the fourth edition of Lewis Putnam Turco’s The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics Including Odd and Invented Forms from The University Press of New England.

Available at Amazon.

Scot Slaby earned his M.A. in Writing (Poetry) from The Johns Hopkins University, and he currently teaches in Frederick, Maryland. His poems have appeared in The Book of Forms, unsplendid 2.3, Verse Wisconsin and elsewhere. He can be reached on his blog, What's at Stake?, at http://www.wutsatstake.blogspot.com.

Thanks, Scott. My friend Michelle is still making fun of me for the single time I texted "2morrow" instead of "tomorrow." I'm glad to hear that newer smartphones are making text speak less popular.

Can't get enough of poetry? Read, Write, Howl! your next sonnet -- traditional or textspeak -- with Robin Hood Black. She's hosting the Poetry Friday round up today.

I'll be a little delayed replying to your comments, friends. We are celebrating Miss J's thirteenth birthday (belatedly) at the Harry Potter theme park :-)

Poetry Postcard 31

Remember my abandoned sonnet (Poetry Postcard 22)? Like a gun flashed on page one of a mystery novel, it had to show up again before the end of the 44 Postcard Project.

It was Groundhog Day, February 2. Baltimore poet Rosalind Heid had just sent me the perfect postcard for the occasion.

But occasional poems? Ugh. Aren’t they the job of poets laureate in countries like Great Britain, where they are required to write poems about coronations and royal births?

E. A. Poe says occasional poems give him nightmares.

I had to put my snark and occasional snobbery aside and give the groundhog some thought. How does he feel about Groundhog Day? What does he think of all the fuss? Does he even like his personified name, Phil?

Children's author Pamela Curtis Swallow explores
these questions in GROUNDHOG GETS A SAY.

I began thinking about other animals that the media hypes because of their purported ability to prognosticate things like the weather, sports scores, and political elections.

This time I was able to complete the sonnet. The poem has a rhyme scheme, but it is not Shakespearean, Spenserian, or Italian. It’s not written in strict iambic pentameter, but there are about ten beats per line. You'll find an explanation of the three standard sonnet forms here.

Today, some say, a poem only needs fourteen lines to be considered a sonnet. See the last paragraph of Poets.org's sonnet article for more on the modern sonnet form.

Groundhog

Phil squats on the doormat of his burrow
and people gather, peering at his shadow.
It is a burden, forecasting the weather.

No one understands that problem better

than Paul, who foretold sports scores and elections

from his aquatic tank. His predilection
for mussels painted with the would-be winner’s
flag or face, for Paul, was merely dinner.

Even the names−Phil, Paul, Oscar the cat
who pads a nursing home, feet halting at
the beds of patients just before they die−

are humanized, as if Phil could say why
his shadow followed him outside today
and why these humans will not go away.

Laura Shovan

Call it serendipity, but after I posted this poem on Facebook, I heard from Linda Baie of Teacher Dance. Her son-in-law was editor on a documentary about Paul the Octopus. Here is a trailer for "The Life and Times of Paul the Psychic Octopus" from YouTube.

Cat lovers, here is an article about Oscar the cat.

Oscar was also the subject of  a book.

Postcard Info:

"Punxsutawney, Pa. a community of 10,000, where, every February 2 the Groundhog appears and forecasts the weather for the succeeding six weeks. A shadow means six more weeks of winter. No sunshine, and hence no shadow, means spring is just around the corner."

MWM Color-Litho “Bursheen” Finished, Made Only By WM Co., Aurora, Mo. 194,218

On 2/2/13, Punxsutawney Phil predicted an early spring. East-coasters who experienced last week's record blizzard may disagree.