In my graduate craft seminar at Sarah Lawrence this fall we’re diving into the topics of poetry and technology, beginning with written language itself, and then moving through the alphabet, the printing press, telephone, radio, TV, the Internet and on. One of our texts, Franck André Jammes’ New Exercises (translated by Charles Borkhuis), mimics the form of small tablets found in the mouths or hands of the ancient Roman dead. Jammes began writing the poems on the surface of a mirror, which prompted me to consider the nature of writing on vertical surfaces. And of course, as soon as you begin to consider, the world decides to show you all the ways it has been preparing for your thoughts. This is a photo of a vertical question on a cement structure on the river behind the Smith campus. It’s a good question, I think.