 For Authors: November 13, 2024 Issue [#12841] |
This week: Poetic Punctuation Edited by: Lilli 🧿 ☕  
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"Punctuation marks are the traffic signals of language:
they tell us to slow down, notice this, take a detour, and stop."
~ Lynne Truss
"The writer who neglects punctuation, or mispunctuates, is liable to be misunderstood for the want of merely a comma, it often occurs that an axiom appears a paradox, or that a sarcasm is converted into a sermonoid."
~ Edgar Allan Poe
"Let grammar, punctuation, and spelling into your life!
Even the most energetic and wonderful mess has to be turned into sentences."
~ Terry Pratchett
"There are 500 reasons I write for children.... Children read books, not reviews. They don't give a hoot about the critics.... They don't read to free themselves of guilt, to quench their thirst for rebellion, or to get rid of alienation. They still believe in God, the family, angels, devils, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other such obsolete stuff.... They don't expect their beloved writer to redeem humanity. Young as they are, they know that it is not in his power. Only the adults have such childish illusions."
~ Isaac Bashevis Singer |
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Many poets need clarification on punctuation—well, writers in general, but for this issue, we will focus on poets. Some throw these dots and dashes altogether. After all, that’s artistic freedom, right? But is it the smart choice? Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of punctuation in poetry.
Reasons why a poet might not punctuate:
 They don't like punctuation.
None of the rules make sense and need to be understood.
Many famous poets didn’t punctuate, so why should I?
The poetry flows from the heart and through the keyboard. A poet may feel that punctuation hinders the sentiment.
If you're not a big fan of punctuation and don’t know the rules, you’re in big trouble as a writer, not just as a poet. We need to know and understand the basics of the language. Otherwise, we'd be like a chef who hates spices!
I know, I know, several famous poets don't use punctuation at all. That may be their trademark, but grammar says we must follow the rules. Those famous poems without punctuation still follow the basic rules of language. They obscure this very cleverly. However, a lack of punctuation can make it difficult for a reader to understand a poem and how we mean it to sound.
Reasons why we should punctuate our poetry:
Punctuation has many functions:
Punctuation steers the breathing of the reader and paces the text.
Punctuation creates comprehension.
Punctuation creates meaning.
t’s a powerful tool.
The pitfalls of ignoring punctuation in poetry:
If you choose to ignore punctuation altogether in poetry, these things can happen:
Readers might give your poem a rhythm you didn’t intend. Your poem will sound different each time somebody reads it.
Readers might create a meaning entirely different from what you intended or even wrong.
Readers might be so confused or turned off that they don’t even finish reading.
Readers may never read another one of your poems again because you make them work too hard.
A poem without punctuation ultimately makes readers work very hard at comprehending what you mean. If it’s too hard, you lose readers. They can lose interest. Is that our intention?
But why were poets like e.e. cummings or W.S. Merwin able to omit punctuation? Because they understand the rules of something referred to as ‘invisible punctuation.’
Rules Of Invisible Punctuation
New line, new breath.
If you omit punctuation marks, readers will tend to think each line deserves a new breath.
Example: W.S. Merwin, After The Alphabets:
I am trying to decipher the language of insects
they are the tongues of the future
their vocabularies describe buildings as food
they can instruct of dark water and the veins of trees
The danger here lies in a staccato-like rhythm. To avoid this, we must vary the sentences' length and construction.
Enjambments.
Enjambment is a crucial tool to encourage readers to proceed to the next line. In a punctuated poem, the absence of a punctuation mark signals an enjambment. If your poem lacks punctuation entirely, strong enjambments must clearly indicate that readers should continue.
How do we do that? For example, place the line breaks so that the end of the first line makes it unmistakably clear that you need to read on. In the following examples, this works with breaks after articles and possessive pronouns:
Example:
Each time he went to the
beach to get more seashells
Example:
Each time he forsook his
dangerous drug habits
Accomplished poets like e.e. cummings did it daringly by splitting the words themselves. The word ‘diminutive’ then looks like this from e.e. cummings:
dim
i
nu
tiv
e
So, just because e.e. cummings doesn’t use punctuation here, it doesn’t mean he doesn’t know the rules. Quite the contrary!
Respect the invisible full stop.
It would help if you planned breaks for your readers. If you don’t, they will become breathless. Your poem will become a never-ending chain of thoughts. It’ll all end up in a big pile of mush inside your reader’s brain. How to avoid this? Place the end of one thought at the end of a line. That’s where the invisible full stop is. Do your readers a favor.
In conclusion:
While some poets may successfully omit punctuation, they do so because of their deep understanding of the rules and their ability to break them intentionally.
As a beginner or intermediate poet, don’t be mistaken—eliminating punctuation may not simplify your writing; in fact, it could complicate your readers' experience.
Moreover, poetry editors might perceive a lack of punctuation as a sign of laziness or incompetence, which could hinder your chances of getting published.
 This newsletter topic was ispired by a question that Elycia Lee ☮  poested at "Newsletter Topics" . Thank you! |
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