This is a nice poem (in its entirety) by Greg McLaren. It is called 'I Have Sent Countless Letters':
To my enemy I have sent countless letters.
I have seen the golden light in his windows.
His house is bathed in it.
I know of that terror which assails him
though he seems invulnerable.
His exhaustive replies (courteous, perfumed,
in verse)
I welcome daily.
And this is a nice thought which, while initially counterintuitive, on further reflection struck me as quite true (from Darren Tofts' essay 'Driven to Abstraction'): the leap from the written to the typewritten word was negligible when compared to that from the typewritten to the electronic computer word-processed word:
The electronic word breaks dramatically with the tradition of inscription and imprinting that were characteristics of manuscript and typographic culture. An assemblage of picture elements on a screen, the electronic word lacks materiality and fixity. It highlights some important concerns to do with the task of keeping words in their place once we have put them there. Specifically, the electronic word rekindles [T S] Eliot's darkest fear: are we losing our control over words?
