Handwriting's Gone

The good thing is,

there is no writer's cramp.

No blots on white.

Crossing of T's dotting of I's

has gone the way of pens.  Pencils.

Emily Dickinson jotting on envelopes.

Letters fly in clean Calibri lines.

Fast electric love.

Undress. Read this.

Always your very own― 

hieroglyph of curly ink.

Scrap of language. Obsolete.

I perfected reclusive cursive.

Doodle. Scratch in dirt with a stick.

Cultivate posies. Place thoughts elsewhere.

tk/April 2014 


R.A.D. Stainforth delivers another masterful read...the perfect amount of tongue in cheek... 

Join Magpie Tales creative writing group. 

small slices of life

"Other letters simply relate the small events that punctuate the passage of time: roses picked at dusk, the laziness of a rainy Sunday, a child crying himself to sleep.  Capturing the moment, these small slices of life, these small gusts of happiness, move me more deeply than all the rest.  A couple of lines or eight pages, a Middle Eastern stamp or a suburban postmark . . . I hoard all these letters like treasure.  One day I hope to fasten them end to end in a half-mile streamer, to float in the wind like a banner raised to the glory of friendship.  It will keep the vultures at bay."

― Jean-Dominique Bauby, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

I wrote a real old fashioned letter the other day.  You know the kind I'm talking about, on paper, with an envelope, and postage stamp.  It actually felt funny, and strangely nostalgic. Even though I rarely send them, I am dreading the day they are totally obsolete.  I wouldn't consider myself a hoarder, just a romantic.  There are several boxes of correspondence, letters with lovely postal marks, stamps, familiar handwriting sharing small slices of life, that I can't bear to part with.  They are little preserved banners, saluting the glory of love and friendship, the simple things in life. 

image: Mr. Hulings' Rack, 1888, detail, by William Michael Harnett

A Dying Art?

Back in the '70s I was intrigued with graphology, the study of and analysis of handwriting, and still have several books on the subject. It is a controversial method of personality evaluation. Results of most recent surveys on the ability for graphology to assess personality and job performance have been negative. I still, however, find the uniqueness of individual handwriting fascinating. It's a very personal extension of one's self, and I think it reveals quite a lot.

Remember the old Zaner Bloser style of cursive we learned in grade school? I always earned high marks in penmanship because of my artistic ability to copy the letters. I actually would have had a great career as a forger. Have you noticed most young people today don't even use cursive writing? They print. I suppose this is because the keyboard is now used more than the old pen and paper method. Even my own handwriting is a curious mix of printing and cursive.

The romantic side of me cringes at the notion of handwriting, as we know it, becoming totally obsolete. I adore the process, as well as the personal touch, of old fashioned letter writing with ink, pen and paper. It truly is an art form, which I hope we can preserve. I am first to

admit, the internet has certainly played a part in the decline of my own hand written correspondence.

This document above is William Shakespeare's last will and testament, written in his own handwriting. It's in a cursive style called "secretary hand", which was commonly used in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It's interesting to note our handwriting today hasn't changed all that much in the last five hundred years. And I hope it continues for at least another five hundred.

top photo: quote from Janet Frame's novel, Towards Another Summer, in

my handwriting