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07036_Field_TCUM T601.txt
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1996-04-10
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her. Indeed, he became so attached to the sound of his
typewriter that, on his deathbed, Henry James called for his
Remington to be worked near his bedside.
Just how much the typewriter has contributed by its
unjustified right-hand margin to the development of vers libre
would be hard to discover, but free verse was really a recovery
of spoken, dramatic stress in poetry, and the typewriter
encouraged exactly this quality. Seated at the typewriter, the
poet, much in the manner of the jazz musician, has the
experience of performance as composition. In the nonliterate
world, this had been the situation of the bard or minstrel. He
had themes, but no text. At the typewriter, the poet
commands the resources of the printing press. The machine is
like a public-address system immediately at hand. He can shout
or whisper or whistle, and make funny typographic faces at the