Handwriting is dying because its laggardly pace impedes thinking, according to an essay by professor Anne Trubek, who includes a brief history of handwriting and the teaching of penmanship alongside her argument.

When a new writing technology develops, we tend to romanticize the older one. The supplanted technology is vaunted as more authentic because it is no longer ubiquitous or official. Thus for monks, print was capricious and script reliable.

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Whatever we use to write, there will be a shortfall between conception and execution, between the ideas in our heads and the words we produce. We often insert nostalgia into this gap.

Daniel Nester calls out the more churlish elements of the professional poetry community in a long piece at The Morning News. Surprisingly, I’ve seen very little response to it. Maybe my Twitter peep gatewaygroupie was right when she said, “There is no way to talk about that essay without getting in trouble.”

“Homo Erectus Recalls the Better Days of Man” is a good example of a poem that makes its bones on the strength of its last line. I’m obsessed with last lines lately.

Paul Graham, one of the most consistent essayists working today, explains the popularity of the list post, and follows with a cogent explanation of why the typical college essay isn’t an essay at all. Very few lit types of my acquaintance read Graham. This should be corrected. Immediately.

A new blog for your feed reader: Brian Turner, the poet-soldier who authored Here, Bullet, is traveling the world for one year as the 2010 Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholar. (via TR Hummer’s Facebook)

If you like Jehanne Dubrow’s poem at Linebreak today, you’ll want to check out “Vitamin M,” her wonderful essay at Brevity:

Away from the ship, away from my parents, Jeremy and I try to find a mean between ignoring health and embracing hypochondria.  It is one of the many compromises that marriage has forced on us.   Jeremy has learned to visit the dermatologist, whenever I panic about a dark spot the size of a pinhead, which may appear on his neck one day in August.  And I have learned how to avoid flu season, thinking myself into a stronger, sturdier body, one immune to sneezes and mucus.  I have learned that a brief history of bowel movements does not make for good conversation.

David Foster Wallace’s introduction to The Best American Essays 2007 gets better every time I read it.

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