With Apologies to E.E. Cummings

Music

Grant, you recently introduced me to the term lapse lock, which I didn’t know.

Right, that’s the opposite of caps lock.

It’s when someone types in all lowercase letters, even when they shouldn’t.

Like, no initial caps on sentences, no capitalizing proper nouns.

Right. And our conversation prompted this poem, written in all lowercase letters, sent to us by Ted Duffield in Berkeley, California.

Lapslock lived in a lowercase town with not so many capitals found. Summer, spring, autumn, winter, he skipped his shifting and held his ground.

And Grant, I just love that.

All the E.E. Cummings fans out there are thinking of the E.E. Cummings poem that starts out,

Anyone lived in a pretty how town with up so floating many bells down, spring, summer, autumn, winter.

He sang his didn’t, he danced his did.

I just love that poem.

So I was thrilled when Ted sent one about how slot.

Yeah, it’s a tribute, right?

It’s a callback.

I love it.

Yeah.

What’s really funny is I’ve always read that poem really fast. Anyone lived in a pretty how town, but you listen to ee cummings read it. We can link to that on our website. He does it really slowly. I was really surprised.

Oh yeah, you got kind of a jazz patter going when you do it. Like I can hear the bass line going in the background.

We appreciate your creative efforts. You know, people send us books they’ve written, chapters of fanfics, they send us photos of their art, they send us pictures of the things they’ve made for their cats. And of course, you can send your poems, words@waywordradio.org.