Some poetic uses of the Caps Lock key

In the past year I've found at least three poets who know their way around the Caps Lock key and have managed to use it successfully in their poetry. Prima facie, it seems both an impossible move to pull off and somehow cheating, like trying to make your poem better by changing the font. But these geniuses make it work. The latest example I encountered was in Ben Mazer's Poems from The Pen & Anvil Press. I picked this up and flipped through it this weekend and a long poem written all in caps ("Even As We Speak") caught me eye. Of course my first thought was, "Ahem, what now?" One page in, I was thinking "Ben Mazer is the new Whitman." Here's a brief excerpt:

THE MOVIES. HOME LIFE. CHILDHOOD. PAST CENTURIES.
FACES AND TALK. PAINTINGS AND SENSATIONS.
STUBBORN SHYNESS. BRIGHTBIRDS FLOWERING
MORNING. ORSON WELLES. CITIZEN KANE.
MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS. TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN.
DAVID COPPERFIELD. TREASURE ISLAND. THE KID.
ORPHANS. POPPY. MISTAKEN IDENTITY. LIGHT IN THE
HALLWAY. ROSES OF DAWNING OVER THE SHOULDER.
POE. POE. NOT EVEN DARKNESS. NEVER GIVE A SUCKER
AN EVEN BREAK. AND THERE IS NO TIME, NO TIME. NO.
WITH THE CAT HOWLING TO BE LET IN. NO NEED TO
WRITE. ONLY THIS WHAT I'M TELLING YOU. TELLING
MYSELF. THERE IS A BEGINNING TO ALL THIS. AN
OCCASION. SCOTTISH BAGPIPES ARE ITS EQUIVALENT,
BUT IT BEAMS DOWN IN SPECKLED LIGHTS. SPOKEN
LIGHTS. I WOULDN'T SAY. GOAT LIGHT. SAWDUST.

I feel like I could read this all day. Or at least for the length of the poem. In the context of a poetry book, words in caps don't feel like shouting, they just feel uniquely flat, uninflected, like a ticker tape of poetry, like a telegram from space. And in a way this makes them more poignant. It's like watching a robot cry.

Karl Parker's Personationskin , which I reviewed a while back, also has a long section written mostly in caps. Here's what I wrote about it then (you can read some excerpts in the full review):

Flipping through Personationskin from back to front (as one may do with poetry collections, which needn’t necessarily be read in consecutive order), one sees first a section nearly all in caps. Since I decided to read from front to back as presumably intended, I was dreading this last section (titled “Horn o’ Plenty, or Notes Toward a Supreme Cornucopia”; in a previously published version, the alternative title was “A Poem in Sticky Notes”), fearing the worst. But it’s a delightful kind of tantrum, a Tourette’s-like explosion of pseudo-jokes and semi-notes after the controlled play that comes before it. And the Caps Lock effect actually renders the outbursts and name-games more hilarious.

One more example, from "Some Occurrences on the 7:18 to Penn" by Ana Bozicevic:

And the stars go:

THINGS ARE NOT LOOKING GOOD FOR US
MOLESTED BY HAIRCUTS ON LAW AND ORDER AND WHATS GONE WRONG
WITH THE SKYLINE, WHY,
INSTEAD OF READING A BOOK YOU READ STAR OR THE TOOTHPASTE, LOST IN AN ANCIENT ALMANAC

ANNE CARSON IN HEAVEN NERVOUS DESPERATE STUDENT
HER WINDBREAKER FILTHY CLUTCHING THE TRAIN SEAT SO TIGHT WE
SAW HER WRISTPULSE IT WAS
LIKE SEEING HER HEART IN COUNTDOWN

ITS NIGHT. THE ELEPHANT OF POETRY

WE MIGHT BE ON AN INVISIBLE PLANK
ABOVE THE DARKNESS AND IT MIGHT BE
A BLESSING, ANNE WHATS THE WORD FOR

BRANCHES DUMPING THEIR SHINE ON YOUR HEAD, WE THINK OF IT EVERY
TIME WE SEE A BOX. HER NECKS SHADOW

TRANSLUCENT, SHE TURNS TO…
NOTHING TO LOVE: CHEEK CLOUDS, EYEBROW NIGHT

WHAT PASSES FOR EUROPE

BOMBS. JUST LIKE US, PASSING FOR LIGHT

See? That's how stars talk.