Dear Hunting Poem by gershon hepner

Whatever happened to the “dear, ”
in our “dear so-and-sos”?
Why was this greeting cut off sheer,
like grass that everybody mows
to keep up with our neighbors who
demand we follow pro-
tocols of grass? Dear’s now taboo,
like lawn grass we’ve allowed to grow
too long. I liked its friendly shape
but now I curb my whim
to let it from my keys escape,
compelled to be as prim
and proper as demanded by
the e-mail daemon mailers
who set the rules. I can’t defy
wordschneiders and wordtailers,
so when I feel inclined to huddle
with a friendly female
I don’t give her a verbal cuddle,
dear-hunting her by e-mail.


Inspired by William Safire who writes, in the NYT, December 21,2008 (Gifts of Gab”) :
If you have one book to give to a lover of the lingo, latch on to “Always On, Language in an Online and Mobile World, ” by Naomi Baron (Oxford, $30) . It was briefly previewed here this summer as “seminal, ” which in Blurbian means “creative; spawning follow-up books.” Baron, with good taste and relentless research, tackles a big question of interpersonal communications: What is e-mail, instant messaging, mobile phonology and other forms of Internetese doing to our spoken and written language? For example, I’ve been wondering why dear is disappearing from salutations; e-mail to me usually begins with a breezy “Hi” or a frowning “Sir, ” occasionally my first or last name and most often no greeting at all. Is dear now too formal or too cuddly? Who decides? The same problem presented itself with the invention of the telephone. Baron recounts the rivalry between Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor who suggested “Ahoy! ” — used mainly up to then in hailing ships — as the way to announce one’s presence; Thomas Alva Edison, who was in competition with Bell over patent rights, suggested the English shout of calling the hounds: “Halloo! ” A variation of Edison’s choice won out but was never prescribed by any authority; in neologistics, the customer creates the custom and democracy rules usage. That’s why, today, correspondents are still dear-hunting.

12/21/08