Scul Daz

Ds10t n dun
Bel ringz n ear
SumrX ovr
Scul dazr here
Tchr mouz rulz
Lyk latr day Mozs
Frosh cnt w8
2 gro n2 thr nozs
Iz sht tyt
Kds cnt b waknd
Scul dazr here
Thrs no mstakn


-M. Hoban




If I could submit a txt mssge poem to The Guardian, this would be my entry. Working on this project took many hours (maybe 4) to hammer out. The sensory/facial imagery was the first anchor point on which to build this poem about moments during the first days of the new school year. (Thanks to a freshman early riser walking ahead of me just after he was dropped off at the Heart of Hun--nozs and Mozs became the first rhyming pair that determined the structure of the piece.) The rest of the content came swiftly. The majority of my time was dedicated to squeezing the poem into the extreme limits of text messaging culture: no more than 160 characters, spacing included in that count! This is where real thinking and creativity came into play:


After a couple days of solitary work on my iPod Touch, I wrote the poem on the board for some feedback from the students. I originally thought that '+r' was a clever shortening of 'summer', but the kids weren't buying it. So I had to invest a few more letters by expanding the word back up to 'sumr.' I originally had the word 'time's' as part of the compound word 'summertime's' written as 'tymz', but that along with 'mouthz' and the two 'ther's needed to be compressed further since the 160 character limit was well maxed out. So 'summertime's' became 'sumrX', 'mouthz' now 'mouz', and the 'ther's now 'thr'. (Note to reader: The author and his word processor have never allowed so many red dotted underlines, ie misspellings, to continue through to a final draft!)


After a few more spin cycles on the sophistic centrifuge, the poem clocked in at a staggering 170 characters (including spaces). In an act of sheer desperation, I had to squeeze, squeeze, squeeze the air out of this jibber-jabber jaunt. Away I say, to three spaces! This done at the expense of putting two words together that sound fine when spoken, but are grammatically incorrect when written. Then 'like' became 'lyk' and 'time' became 'tym'. Further stamping off spaces and gnashing of keystrokes brought us to the final entry. Finally! I was able to wrangle the thing down to 160 characters exactly. (Count 'em if you doubt me!)


Weekend Homework Assignment (entered on blog at 2:09 p.m. Friday, Sept. 25th):

Using the comment function on this blog post, write a review of Mr. Hoban's poem 'Scul Daz" in SMS shorthand. You must use no fewer than 50 characters (NOT including spaces!!!) and no more than 160 characters (NOT including spaces!!!) in your review.

Your comment post must be entered before class time on Tuesday Sept. 29th.

If you are the LAST PERSON TO POST you must write a review on everyone else's post!! (Go through the list of comments from classmates in your Intro to Media Arts section to see if you are the last one!)

Also, make sure you include your name in the post.


--Mr. Hoban