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07032_Field_TCUM T597.txt
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1996-04-10
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921b
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16 lines
In 1882, ads proclaimed that the typewriter could be
used as an aid in learning to read, write, spell, and punctuate.
Now, eighty years later, the typewriter is used only in
experimental classrooms. The ordinary classroom still holds the
typewriter at bay as a merely attractive and distractive toy.
But poets like Charles Olson are eloquent in proclaiming the
power of the typewriter to help the poet to indicate exactly the
breath, the pauses, the suspension, even, of syllables, the
juxtaposition, even, of parts of phrases which he intends,
observing that, for the first time, the poet has the stave and
the bar that the musician has had.
The same kind of autonomy and independence which
Charles Olson claims that the typewriter confers on the voice of
the poet was claimed for the typewriter by the career woman of
fifty years ago. British women were reputed to have developed