Typography
Do you remember archy and mehitabel?
Archy is a cockroach with the soul of a poet, and Mehitabel is an alley cat with a celebrated past — she claims she was Cleopatra in a previous life. Together, cockroach and cat are the foundation of one of the most engaging collections of light poetry to come out of the twentieth century.
“expression is the need of my soul,” declares Archy, who labored as a free-verse poet in an earlier incarnation. At night, alone, he dives furiously on the keys of Don Marquis' typewriter to describe a cockroach's view of the world, rich with cynicism and humor. It's difficult enough to operate the typewriter's return bar to get a fresh line of paper; all of Archy's dispatches are written lowercase, and without punctuation, because he is unable to hit both shift and letter keys to produce a capital letter.
Don Marquis introduced Archy in 1916. By 1927 Archy was putting out quite a bit of poetry:
i met a toad
the other day by the name
of warty bliggens
he was sitting under
a toadstool
feeling contented
he explained that when the cosmos
was created
that toadstool was especially
planned for his personal
shelter from sun and rain
thought out and prepared
for him
(The toad goes on to explain that there must be a purpose to the universe, and that the universe's purpose is to serve the toad.)
Around the same time, in 1920, e.e. cummings is writing poems like “In just-“.
N Just-
But now neither Archy nor Cummings is at all unusual. No one uses capital letters any more. Who cares about punctuation? Their typography has lost its shock value. We're completely used to the way Archy writes.
There are probably at least two generations now who would never care if you wrote “i” and abbreviated everything. Just another text message, you famous poet e.e. cummings you.