It’s not a state secret
That E mail is not written.
Why is this when ordinarily
Good writers are writing it?
The reason is that E mail
Is inherently bad -- in and of itself
And if the most elegant and pains-
Taking care and craft were taken
With its execution the result
Would be inelegant, ugly, cheap
Clap trap and disgusting.
E mail just doesn’t think
Nor does it “write".
A message that cannot wait three days
Is probably not at all urgent
Or worthy of delivery.
We know this
Because the messages of great importance
Have had no standardized delivery rate
Whether by horse, human runner, or the
Flash of mirror from Querebus to Puylaurens.
A cable can be handed to you
With a flourish, terse language
Pasted on crisp paper --
What an occasion!
Of course that is why it’s ascendant
And will probably be final -- unless
When the lights go out the goose quill
Hath another day.
Missed our #Shakespeare First Folio at yesterday’s talk? Another chance to view at our Open Day: photo via Guildhall Library @GuildhallLib, 19 June 2013
Goose quill pen: artist unknown, c. 18th c., via Jane Austen's World, 17 November 2011
Favourite Gunpowder fact: One plotter wrote secret letters in orange juice to his lover while he was in the Tower: image via Dainty Ballerina @DaintyBallerina, 4 November 2014
The English poet and soldier Wilfred Owen was killed in action #onthisday in 1918. #WWI: image via The British Library @britishlibrary, 4 November 2014
#ChateauDeQueribus #Aude #CheminCathare #Brume: image via Ludivine Félix @GingerLudi, 16 September 2014
#onthis day in 1957 Jack Kerouac's On the Road was first published. Read his inspirations: image via The British Library @britishlibrary, 5 September 2014
When writing an email, don't think electronic, think EVIDENCE: image via Hospitality Lawyer @hospitality_law, 23 October 2014
Three ways most #marketers screw up #email subject line split tests: image via Ecoconsultancy @Ecoconsultancy, 2 November 2014
Remise des prix du concours départemental de labours à #puylaurens Bonne image pour les jeunes #agriculteurs: image via Philippe Folliot @philippefolliot, 25 August 2013
L'exterieur Francais #puylaurens: image by Jennifer Adam @RubiedMoon, 4 June 2013
Shakespeare’s First Folio currently on display at U of T's rare book library: image via Torontoist @torontoist, 22 September 2014
The plays of #Shakespeare were written by……Shakespeare!
1st folio at @bodleianlibs #HappyBirthdayShakespeare: image via Matthew Ward @HistoryNedsYou, 23 April 2014
Love this: @FolgerLibrary's s copy of Shakespeare 1st folio features a child's doodles: image via The Appendix @appendixjournal, 17 October 2014
Shakespeare's birthday is celebrated today! Here's a list of his original cast from our copy of the First Folio: image by Glasgow Uni p Coll @GUspcoll, 23 April 2014
Fantastic! Shakespeare's First Folio 1623
Inspiring wrinkles, worn edges & stains! Thanks @StratPerthMuse @stratfest: image via Josue Laboucane, 17 August 2014
Edward Dorn (1929-1999): On first looking into Shakespeare’s Folios just after Christmas 1998, at the New British Library (unpublished, courtesy Jennifer Dunbar Dorn)
"...a poem of Ed's called "On First Looking into Shakespeare's Folios"
that I discovered on computer while I was there. Ed sure wanted out
before the new millennium crashed in, didn't he?" -- J.D.D.
Ed
was a wonderful letter writer, and he wrote most often by hand, using
those writerly tools of lost epochs, pen and ink. (To us, in any case,
he never wrote electronically. At times I suspected he associated email with the hand of the assassin.) He wrote in a singular, expressive hand that moved with the thought, now swift, now slower. His voice could be heard in it. Getting a letter from him was indeed always an occasion!
9 comments:
Ed's poem was writ in London at the beginning of the final year of his life; his title, of course, refers to the poem decorated here (which decoration by the way gets a bit bigger and thus for what it's worth more legible if clicked upon).
The landscape evoked in the Dorn poem (and seen in three of the photos here) is that of the Languedoc region, which, some years earlier, Ed had explored with particular interest (heretic hunting) during a teaching stint at Montpellier.
Because the messages of great importance
Have had no standardized delivery rate...
put me in mind of:
"On the other side, true dispatch is a rich thing. For time is the measure of business, as money is of wares; and business is bought at a dear hand where there is small dispatch. The Spartans and Spaniards have been noted to be of small dispatch; Mi venga la muerte de Spagna; Let my death come from Spain; for then it will be sure to be long in coming."
- Francis Bacon, "Of Dispatch"
You, Mr. Tom, keep those e-writ words coming. At least until my lights go out.
yr faithful reader,
kent
such crucial variables composing the crux of existence, time and distance (time being the father of distance, or distance the father of time). fuck with these things (and we do, we're working hard at perfecting the pornography of being) and all value, the most precious and illusory of things, vanishes into the same thin air it was (potentially) born from.
xo
erin
and then she hits send ...
Reminds me of how much I love old books, the smell of them, the calligraphy, the magic. Now they appear slick and smooth and impersonal by contrast.
souls
do they even exist
Tom,
This is about as close I'll come to answering Vincent's question above. I'll start afresh tomorrow.
All the post offices here have been sold off to the highest bidder and customers reassigned to Staples outlets, so it seems we won't ever be doing mail any more, Virginia.
The Bacon line about wanting the dark rider to be forced to make the long trip -- whether the perilous sea voyage via Lisbon or the overland route, changing horses all through France, stopping at many inns, engaging with many bandits along the way -- always seemed to me a brilliant bit of joking, but then somewhere along the line it took on a different meaning, and stopped being funny.
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