punctuation: intrusion or guide?

[butters]

Whatever floats your boat.

I find the more punctuation in poetry, the more distraction there is. Especially when you can make a non-dialogue statement with one or few words, which is not a proper English sentence.

Unless you end a sentence and began a sentence within a single line, a Period or a Question Mark in between really isn't necessary.

If your sentence and line end simultaneously, then there is really no point.

However, if you ask a question, a question mark helps you convey that it was a question and not a statement.

Rarely do I ever see a true need for colons or semi colons. I've personally used a colon once in 150+ writes.

Speech can easily be conveyed with italics ( or if cursive if hand written ), dispensing with the need for quotes.

you say you find them a distraction; is it the clash between how you feel the author wants you to read it and how you would choose to read it? does it just look ugly on the page, so more an aesthetics issue? do you feel it out-dated? does it vary depending on style/form/topic of the poem in question? above all, do you feel it's the author intruding on the poem too visually?

I'm the poet, so I figure part of my poeting job is to tell you how I want it read. Now, as the reader, if you want to ignore my directions go ahead. It's not a movie or a play of any sort. You aren't an actor and I'm not a director.

I use all kinds of devices. Sometimes you can infer by meter where you should pause, at others, there's a line break, and at more there's a punctuation mark. Enjambment means that I can trick you into reading past the end rhyme on a line but usually only if I've been using some other means of telling you where to pause.

You should get a Second Life account and join us for poetry open mics. That will give you a tonne of insight onto how poets read their own work.

hiya, champs!

i agree that it is part of your job, but subtlety counts, no? and you say 'my directions' and follow it with 'I'm not a director' i rather think we all are, to a degree - we're directing where the eye should be looking, we're painting word-images, asking readers to taste, to feel, to experience. if there's a subtle hand at work, and yours is well-skilled, the punctuation won't leap out and jar the eye or ear - word-choices to develop patterning of sound, of pace, will lead the reader where you want them to go with punctuation a secondary tool imo.

ah, well maybe not - the toruble is i've been turned off of poems that i really liked by hearing them read by their authors, which sounds flippin' awful to say but it's honest. at the same time, every reading i've been to has been enjoyable because there's aways something, some one whose readings i've loved and the overall company/ambience has been great. i don't even like hearing me reading my stuff aloud but have had pieces read for me that went down a treat, mostly because the person was a good reader with the kind of voice and delivery that'd make anything sound good. it's a skill most of us don't posses, though it's interesting to hear the pacing the poet intended as they wrote. there are some famous poets whose works i've truly loved, but hearing them deliver them? ugh. am i just a picky bitch?

This brings up something that bothers me about spoken word poetry. There have been multiple references spread out across the pobo threads about reading a poem aloud. As I said, I've heard poets read their pieces aloud, pieces that I liked, and have found that I did not like them as read by the author.

I think it has more to do with cadence and where they read emphasis than with punctuation, but, is it not the work of punctuation to show where the emphasis is intended? And by not conveying those things, is the piece intentionally left open for interpretation or is it a failing of the punctuation?

that first paragraph echoes what i just typed

as to the second, i'd say 'yes' but, again, i suspect it's all about the skill of the hand creating the piece as to how intrusive we find it, and (possibly) the skill of the reader as to how they interpret pieces with sparse or no punctuation at all. as to whether or not it's a failing or a deliberate decision . . . hmmn, at best guess it's all about what we know of the author, how skilled we find them to be already through reading other material of theirs. if i find something 'failing' in a piece by someone i know to be adept at handling this stuff, then i look again at my own shortcomings as a reader to see if the fault lies with me. often it is, and it's always worth that visit to check yourself before checking the author for an error of their judgement.

 

[Tsotha]

I still don't know how to quote a post from another thread, but I'm reading the Butter's interview from last year and thought this post of Angeline's fit into this thread.

Go to other thread
Quote desired post
Copy desired quote
Return here and hit reply
Paste said copy into new post

There is a small button right beside the "quote" button. If you click it, the icon changes. That means the message is now quoted. You can go to another thread, hit the reply button, and the message will be carried over. You can also quote multiple posts, as I just did above.

 

[Tsotha]

In my opinion, poetry is a superset of prose. Writing a poem, you're concerned with the presentation of words themselves, while in prose, you're concerned with presentation in a larger scale, both the content and its delivery. The granularity is different. It doesn't mean a poem cannot tell a story, or that it cannot lean onto an emotional / polemic subject as a crutch to elicit emotion. Nor does it mean that prose cannot rely on poetic tools to enhance the presentation / delivery of content. In my mind, there isn't a line separating the two, rather it's a fuzzy thing.

When you write a poem, you (hopefully) have an idea of what it is you want to achieve. Each choice (what word to use, whether to use punctuation, where to break lines, whether to rhyme, etc.) should be made to further your chosen objective. Do I want the reader to speed through this sentence? Do I want him to stop at a specific word? Do I want him to jump from line to line frenetically? Do I want one very long, never ending line? Why?

Any response that says: "yes, you should always/never use punctuation" makes no sense to me. It's like taking an entire array of tools and throwing them in the garbage.

It really doesn't matter, though. Whatever your intention, most likely no one will understand. There is a rule that if three "better poets" think you're wrong, you are both wrong and an idiot (twelveoone, 2014). So you might as well write totally randomly, it makes no difference.

 

[Magnetron]

you say you find them a distraction; is it the clash between how you feel the author wants you to read it and how you would choose to read it? does it just look ugly on the page, so more an aesthetics issue? do you feel it out-dated? does it vary depending on style/form/topic of the poem in question? above all, do you feel it's the author intruding on the poem too visually?

Mainly distraction like branches in a creek slowing down the water flow.

A semi colon is a one way ticket to slowing down the fluidity of a piece. The reader's brain is suddenly put into a position of having to process why the semi colon is even necessary where it was positioned precisely because of its infrequent usage.

It is FOD on an airplane runway. Too much FOD and it could result in an aborted takeoff. A few seconds is a long time for a reader to pause, backtrack and reread a few lines because of an excessively lengthy and or convoluted sentence.

A sentence should NOT take two or three reads to comprehend. If it isn't comprehensible in the First Pass to the majority of readers, you are doing your own writing a disservice.

The brain immediately grasps the simultaneous ending of sentences and lines without periods. Throw in a question mark and they anticipate that the next question will likewise be thusly capped. The same with an Exclamation Point. Confusion with statements and questions is minimized when you remove Periods from the equation.

Confusion is maximized when you have Periods and Questions that aren't consistent. Information processing is slowed as the reader begins to question if he is reading the text properly or not. I don't know how many times I've come across a question ended with a Period and backtracked just to ensure it was indeed a question. Or when 1 out of 3 questions was capped off with a Question Mark. The brain doesn't need the added distraction of solving the mystery as to why 2 out of the 3 questions weren't punctuated accordingly.

The longer the poem, the more these little distractions begin to pile up like coin operated tollbooth gates and road construction and auto accidents and rush hour and wild animals and etc. along a freeway.

I don't care what anyone else says - the First Pass should always read the way it is was intended to be read. Don't throw monkey wrenches at the reader along the way and it will.

If a writer is resigned to letting the majority of readers get it right on the Second or Third Pass, then I can only speculate that said writer feels entitled to additional passes for whatever reason that in my ( uneducated ) opinion will backfire in one way or another.

And I freely admit that I am uneducated. I am a high school dropout that never went on to get his GED or diploma equivalent and any college degrees. I don't know anything about poetry other than what I've taught myself and learned from a few others along the way.

 

[butters]

I'm a believer in form follows function. The nuns drummed punctuation into our elementary skulls sometimes to a fault. However, those lessons were part of the larger issue of grammatical structure.

If punctuation isn't needed because of intended line ending pauses or mid-line caesuras are obvious, I don't see the need, although when I look at some of my work, I must admit to sometimes being a creature of habit. A small stanza I think proves my point (or should I say, "a small stanza, I think, proves my point."(LOL))

The Last Days of de Sade

"I'm hungry once again.
The porridge sates my stomach
for five minutes, Guillory, you fool!"

He chides his jailer with disdain...

I really don't think commas here are needed before or after "Gillory" because the sonics in minutes and Guillory form the caesura.

oh yes, those nuns knew a thing or three about punctuation

you know what, i can't read that as it stands and imagine it without the commas - my brain is enslaved to conforming to directions! to read it without, i have to c&p t then delete before i can even offer an opinion!

k:

"I'm hungry once again.
The porridge sates my stomach
for five minutes Guillory you fool!"

He chides his jailer with disdain...

right, you're correct that the sounds form the breaks, but as you've set precedence with the speech-marks and period, and use the exclamation mark and further s.m's afterwards, and the use of 'sate' (making this feel of a time other than our own) it feels more formalised, like part of a play i'm watching/listening to and removing the commas intrudes on its presentation. how strange we are, people. lol

I still don't know how to quote a post from another thread, but I'm reading the Butter's interview from last year and thought this post of Angeline's fit into this thread.

I can't really say that anything "spoils" it for me, because as I read through your offerings it still stood out as an especially good poem. So the lack of caps and punctuation did not keep me from getting that. And I also know that both lack of capping and even failing to punctuate or punctuating differently from what a reader would expect can actually be strengths in a poem (William Carlos Williams and ee cummings are perfect examples of that).

With the caps it is simply a matter of preference on my part. (I think.) I'm trying to think of a way your poem would be better served if you had treated the lines with caps and I'm not really succeeding in that effort, so let's leave it at preference.

The punctuation is another matter, and for me it is the consistency issue (something that frankly has been so drilled into my being as an editor that it's hard for me to leave things inconsistent--and sometimes it is better to do that in a poem). Let's look at your poem again:

who can tell me the shape of madness?
what varicose seas drive forth
in tension of the blood
what sad, voluptuous dreams become
escape from inner voices
as they burn the heretics -
over and over

It looks half-punctuated to me. Why place a question mark after "madness" but not after "blood" or "over" in the last line? They're all questions. I understand that you put a comma between "sad" and "voluptuous" because you don't want it read as if the former is modifying the latter, right? I also understand that you used a dash after "heretics" because you want the reader to pause before moving down to that last line. So why not put the rest of the necessary marks in? It seems as if they're just missing. I can, however, see why you wouldn't want a question mark at the very end of the piece. Once you put that dash in, you've passed the question part.

If I were editing it, I'd do something like this:

Who can tell the shape
of madness? What varicose seas
drive forth in tension
of the blood? What sad,
voluptuous dreams become
escape from inner voices?

They burn the heretics
over and over.

That's the full Angeline treatment lol and while it does resolve the problem of putting a question mark at the end of the poem, it probably changes it to a point where the poem doesn't work quite the same way anymore. But that is seeing it through my eyes.

I honestly am never sure how much my drive to make something look grammatically "right" has to do with me being an editor and how much with my preference as a poet.

Thanks for being so willing to look at your writing on such a micro level. I love you for your poems AND your confidence. It's a great learning experience pour moi, Divine Ms. B.

It's the bold section that was especially interesting to me having worked with editors and graphic artists and listened to some of the debates that went on between the two over ascetics vs propriety. I've also done simple copy editing and I'm with Angeline, inconsistency bugs the bajeepers out of me. Poetic license or not, it always makes me pause and it's something I have to get past, in both poetry and prose, to enjoy the piece. Even though I'm guilty of it myself from time to time.

in the instance of the poem angie looked at, i didn't manage to convey through its layout to her 'edit-head' that there was only the one question - the second being a statement akin to 'what big teeth you have!'... how much was my failing as an author, how much angie's own as a reader is moot; it's enough that it failed to work for her. i suppose all we can do as authors is weigh each option, try for clarity (unless obscurity's the goal), and hope more get it than not. this is where 12's idea of 3 comes into things: if 3 readers you honestly respect for their insight, intuitiveness and writing all tell you the same something has failed then you owe it to yourself to look again for another solution.

 

[Magnetron]

There is a small button right beside the "quote" button. If you click it, the icon changes. That means the message is now quoted. You can go to another thread, hit the reply button, and the message will be carried over. You can also quote multiple posts, as I just did above.

I'm Old School.

 

[Tsotha]

I'm Old School.

Respect. *bro fists*

 

[butters]

I like consistency of usage. If you punctuate anywhere in a poem you need to consistently punctuate throughout the poem or opt to not punctuate at all.

to what degree, though, katie? would you find consistency of sparse punctuation acceptable, or would the use of a single comma require the kind of full punctuation we regard as proper in prose? does it vary depending on the content or form of a poem?

Mainly distraction like branches in a creek slowing down the water flow.

A semi colon is a one way ticket to slowing down the fluidity of a piece. The reader's brain is suddenly put into a position of having to process why the semi colon is even necessary where it was positioned precisely because of its infrequent usage.

It is FOD on an airplane runway. Too much FOD and it could result in an aborted takeoff. A few seconds is a long time for a reader to pause, backtrack and reread a few lines because of an excessively lengthy and or convoluted sentence.

A sentence should NOT take two or three reads to comprehend. If it isn't comprehensible in the First Pass to the majority of readers, you are doing your own writing a disservice.

The brain immediately grasps the simultaneous ending of sentences and lines without periods. Throw in a question mark and they anticipate that the next question will likewise be thusly capped. The same with an Exclamation Point. Confusion with statements and questions is minimized when you remove Periods from the equation.

Confusion is maximized when you have Periods and Questions that aren't consistent. Information processing is slowed as the reader begins to question if he is reading the text properly or not. I don't know how many times I've come across a question ended with a Period and backtracked just to ensure it was indeed a question. Or when 1 out of 3 questions was capped off with a Question Mark. The brain doesn't need the added distraction of solving the mystery as to why 2 out of the 3 questions weren't punctuated accordingly.

The longer the poem, the more these little distractions begin to pile up like coin operated tollbooth gates and road construction and auto accidents and rush hour and wild animals and etc. along a freeway.

I don't care what anyone else says - the First Pass should always read the way it is was intended to be read. Don't throw monkey wrenches at the reader along the way and it will.

If a writer is resigned to letting the majority of readers get it right on the Second or Third Pass, then I can only speculate that said writer feels entitled to additional passes for whatever reason that in my ( uneducated ) opinion will backfire in one way or another.

And I freely admit that I am uneducated. I am a high school dropout that never went on to get his GED or diploma equivalent and any college degrees. I don't know anything about poetry other than what I've taught myself and learned from a few others along the way.

first off, you're not alone here in being 'uneducated' - if we don't allow it to get in our way we're as capable of learning and writing as the next, and (in some instances) might be better placed - having more open minds, ready to accept things some find hard precisely because of what they've studied. most of that i've learned has been through reading all my life, but the poets here - their willingness to discuss, share, debate - have taught me more than at any other site i've ever visited.

FOD? i'm guessing things on the runway that can cause a hazard.... ha, you have me seeing bits of unnecessary poetry that have fallen off previous poem-planes requiring removal for safe take-off and landing.

i agree about Q-marks for the most part, though i'd question why they'd not punctuated in case it wasn't in error but serving another function. i agree about liking to read a poem through without getting side-tracked at the first, but then enjoy reading back through to seek nuances might have missed. nothing i like better than to unwrap the hidden layers that make a piece so much more than it might forst appear.

 

[Tsotha]

I like consistency of usage. If you punctuate anywhere in a poem you need to consistently punctuate throughout the poem or opt to not punctuate at all.

What if I write a poem about a shift in the protagonist's mental state, a descent into madness? Or about growing anger / sadness? What if I want to alter the rhythm as I go, encouraging the reader to go through the words faster? Or break the sentences at odd intervals? Or put a pause where one shouldn't exist?

 

[butters]

What if I write a poem about a shift in the protagonist's mental state, a descent into madness? Or about growing anger / sadness? What if I want to alter the rhythm as I go, encouraging the reader to go through the words faster? Or break the sentences at odd intervals? Or put a pause where one shouldn't exist?

context is king *nods*

 

[KatieJones]

to what degree, though, katie? would you find consistency of sparse punctuation acceptable, or would the use of a single comma require the kind of full punctuation we regard as proper in prose? does it vary depending on the content or form of a poem?

I am sure every reader is different but for me, yes, if you use a single comma then I will expect full punctuation in the rest of your piece- the same as I would if it was a prose piece. Just one reader's opinion though, and what a writer chooses to do or not do ultimately is about what they want and if they are communicating well with their intended audience.

I use punctuation pretty much in the same manner I would if I was writing prose. I think personally as a reader I find it jarring if the phrasing in a poem does not warrant punctuation grammatically but a poet randomly throws it in there.
Punctuation and capitalization are a system of rules designed to facilitate and clarify communication. If they devolve into randomness they no longer do that job for me. For me it muddies the water to use it here and there depending on mood in the same way it would if a writer changed languages half way through a poem. If commas or capitalization are not random in prose then I don't think they should be random in poetry either. And for me, clarity is the foundation of great writing.

So, my feeling is that if you don't want to follow the punctuation rules then don't punctuate at all because poetry does allow you that freedom (if you wish to take it) to write in a capital and punctuation-free style. And I am fine reading a poem that does not use any punctuation conventions. I just look for my reading cues in the breaking.

But like I said, if your intended audience is not me then who cares what I think?

 

[KatieJones]

context is king *nods*

I was actually going to say that as well in my post but I couldn't think of an example. If a shift away or to punctuation is connected to meaning then it makes perfect sense.

 

[KatieJones]

What if I write a poem about a shift in the protagonist's mental state, a descent into madness? Or about growing anger / sadness? What if I want to alter the rhythm as I go, encouraging the reader to go through the words faster? Or break the sentences at odd intervals? Or put a pause where one shouldn't exist?

You can! I absolutely agree that if connected to meaning or theme then the lack of consistency makes sense.

Otherwise, I lean to wanting it to be one or the other. But that's just a reading preference.

 

[Tsotha]

Punctuation and capitalization are a system of rules designed to facilitate and clarify communication. If they devolve into randomness they no longer do that job for me. For me it muddies the water to use it here and there depending on mood in the same way it would if a writer changed languages half way through a poem.

Good idea. *noting down*

 

[Magnetron]

to what degree, though, katie? would you find consistency of sparse punctuation acceptable, or would the use of a single comma require the kind of full punctuation we regard as proper in prose? does it vary depending on the content or form of a poem?


first off, you're not alone here in being 'uneducated' - if we don't allow it to get in our way we're as capable of learning and writing as the next, and (in some instances) might be better placed - having more open minds, ready to accept things some find hard precisely because of what they've studied. most of that i've learned has been through reading all my life, but the poets here - their willingness to discuss, share, debate - have taught me more than at any other site i've ever visited.

FOD? i'm guessing things on the runway that can cause a hazard.... ha, you have me seeing bits of unnecessary poetry that have fallen off previous poem-planes requiring removal for safe take-off and landing.

i agree about Q-marks for the most part, though i'd question why they'd not punctuated in case it wasn't in error but serving another function. i agree about liking to read a poem through without getting side-tracked at the first, but then enjoy reading back through to seek nuances might have missed. nothing i like better than to unwrap the hidden layers that make a piece so much more than it might forst appear.

Yep, FOD = Foreign Object Debris.

I too appreciate hidden layers of poetry after the initial read; I'd rather have my readers tackling those instead of dealing with an albatross sucked into an engine upon takeoff.

 

[Magnetron]

I dislike commas immensely
and I would rather see Society dispense with them
entirely
as they hold little value in today's world
reeking of divisive partisan political shenanigans
I've come to detest in the quest to turn
you against me and me against you
using carefully worded strings
attached to incomplete promises of full disclosure
periodically
making me question mark your motives
amidst fits of exclamation pointing.

 

[Magnetron]

Respect. *bro fists*

Po-Bros before Pro-Hoes

* blows it up with finger shrapnel *














pro-hoes ..... prose ........ get it?

 

[Tsotha]

only a few words
to play with my hands while bound
full of regrets regret the poor choices made
the line breaks the commas and periods

 

[Magnetron]

FOD? i'm guessing things on the runway that can cause a hazard.... ha, you have me seeing bits of unnecessary poetry that have fallen off previous poem-planes requiring removal for safe take-off and landing.

You are so fucking weird in a good short bus way.

 

[Tsotha]

bound and pulled através do céu
é o que desejo to happen
but it's a mess, vês?
o horizonte tão distante lies
beyond sight uma necessidade
to fasten distâncias desfeitas
sem sentido sem comma
this poem makes no sense
sem duas partes

 

[Tsotha]

pro-hoes ..... prose ........ get it?

I missed it the first time. I blame my non-native ear.

 

[butters]

You are so fucking weird in a good short bus way.

^ this just might be my new sig

 

[champagne1982]

I am sure every reader is different but for me, yes, if you use a single comma then I will expect full punctuation in the rest of your piece- the same as I would if it was a prose piece. Just one reader's opinion though, and what a writer chooses to do or not do ultimately is about what they want and if they are communicating well with their intended audience.

I use punctuation pretty much in the same manner I would if I was writing prose. I think personally as a reader I find it jarring if the phrasing in a poem does not warrant punctuation grammatically but a poet randomly throws it in there.
Punctuation and capitalization are a system of rules designed to facilitate and clarify communication. If they devolve into randomness they no longer do that job for me. For me it muddies the water to use it here and there depending on mood in the same way it would if a writer changed languages half way through a poem. If commas or capitalization are not random in prose then I don't think they should be random in poetry either. And for me, clarity is the foundation of great writing.

So, my feeling is that if you don't want to follow the punctuation rules then don't punctuate at all because poetry does allow you that freedom (if you wish to take it) to write in a capital and punctuation-free style. And I am fine reading a poem that does not use any punctuation conventions. I just look for my reading cues in the breaking.

But like I said, if your intended audience is not me then who cares what I think?

do not read e.e. cummings

He disdained rules in poetry simply because he argued the poet is in charge of what the poem looks like, just as a painter is in charge of how the portrait looks.

 

[Trixareforkids]

as to the second, i'd say 'yes' but, again, i suspect it's all about the skill of the hand creating the piece as to how intrusive we find it, and (possibly) the skill of the reader as to how they interpret pieces with sparse or no punctuation at all. as to whether or not it's a failing or a deliberate decision . . . hmmn, at best guess it's all about what we know of the author, how skilled we find them to be already through reading other material of theirs. if i find something 'failing' in a piece by someone i know to be adept at handling this stuff, then i look again at my own shortcomings as a reader to see if the fault lies with me. often it is, and it's always worth that visit to check yourself before checking the author for an error of their judgement.

I was thinking more from a writer's point of view than a reader. I'm still working out how, other than line breaks and commas, to indicate emphasis on a certain word or phrase. I've used itals, but that's for very strong emphasis. I'm still working on how to present softer emphasis. Ah well, I'll figure it out one of these days.

On a side note, I've got two I want to do as audio, when i finally figure out how, as I sometimes feel mine are better heard than read. I'll be interested to hear your honest opinion on the readings. I'm thick skinned, so a thumbs down wouldn't make me cry too awful much

 

[Tsotha]

do not read e.e. cummings

He disdained rules in poetry simply because he argued the poet is in charge of what the poem looks like, just as a painter is in charge of how the portrait looks.

Could you elaborate? Why not read him? Do you disagree with what he said, then?