Mark Twain Poem by Doug Lane

Mark Twain
was the first
to write an important novel
- -Tom Sawyer- -
with a typewriter.

And he also said
of it,
"If people knew how fast
I wrote it,
they wouldn't think
it was any good."

"After a year or two, "
he said of his typewriter,
I found it was
degrading my character."
Moreover, it was
"full of caprices,
full of defects,
- - - -devilish ones."

My question is,
if this were back
at the dawn of typewriters,
how could he possibly
type
that fast
even if he was
thinking of the words
that fast?
Or faster?

Wouldn't he struggle
with the tab button,
and shifting for caps
and thumbing the bar
to double space
after question marks
and colons,
which, not incidentally,
also required
the shift button?

Surely
he hadn't already
mastered and memorized
QWERTY
that quickly.

And don't tell me
he hunted and pecked
a beloved novel
in six weeks.

Hunting and pecking,
especially at warp speed,
have nothing to do
with love.
Unless, perhaps,
you're a
chicken.