Poetry News

Typewriters that do more than type

Originally Published: December 13, 2011

Poets love typewriters. Or at least Lawrence Ferlinghetti does:

and I am waiting
for some strains of unpremeditated art
to shake my typewriter.

And Bernadette Mayer:

i speak via electric typewriter.

And Allen Ginsberg, the most effusive of them all:

The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice is holy the hearers are holy the ecstasy is holy!

So, in honor of these typewriter-philes, a few riffs on the beloved machine. A typewriter that paints. A typewriter that makes cocktails. And, for the holidays, a gingerbread typewriter that you can eat.