Modem

“I’ve never seen ‘modem’ used in a poem,” says a friend of Anne Fadiman in her book ‘Ex Libris’ (1998), lamenting the beauties of lost English. Which is about the time ‘modem’ became common English, as connectivity took over. Remember ‘OK Computer’? Twenty years later we find whole sites of modem poetry. Arguably, today modems deliver more poetry to readers than print, but who can prove it? One could compose a captivating concrete poem ‘Ode to the Modem’ by accenting ODE between the two mediums: M ODE M. Google Search still asks though, ‘Did you mean: modern poetry.’ Only connect.