Frustrated! or is it . or is it ; or is it...

[Salinye]

I may have asked this before, a long time ago, but can't remember. I've lately been bitten by the desire to write poetry and again find myself struggling with punctuation. I just am wholly unsure how to punctuate poetry. Do you treat it just like you would any other sentence? Is there a general rule of thumb, or like most things in poetry is it all up to artistic choice?

 

Anyone who wishes to help this girl who's poetic intentions are more talented than her ability to get it onto paper, I'd appreciate it.

 

~Salinye

[Zadown]

I don't use any punctuation, which may irk some people but fits best my idea of how the vision the poem was inspried by flows inside my head. YMMV.

[Mynx]

Personally, I believe that puncuation in poetry is entirely up to the author.

There are some people out there, usually teachers, who have very set opinions on how one writes poetry but I find that if I try to conform to that al that comes out of my mind is utter crap.

Write however you wish and put punctuation where you want it.

More often than not, you will find that by changing the punctuation, you can change the entire meaning of a piece...

 

 

Of course this is just all my opinion...

[Zariah]

Found on Absolute Write

 

"Punctuation in poetry is similar to punctuation in prose. In many ways, it serves the same purpose as bar lines in music: without them, the words and notes flow all together. Punctuation assists in organizing the written word into discernable packages or units. Punctuation in poetry serves the same function as in prose: 1. to encapsulate thoughts and ideas; to aid in coherence and the presentation of meaning (i.e., to avoid confusion); and especially to signal when and where to breathe.

 

Many poetic forms require punctuation (unless, of course, you’re a rebel-in-training). Consider the following: the acrostic, the ballade, the sonnet, the epic, the cinquain, the ode, the villanelle, the terzanelle, the triolet, the rondeau, the pantoum, the ghazal, and blank verse.

 

Speaking generally, what forms don’t? Western adaptations of traditional Asian forms such as haiku, senryu, sijo, and tanka to name but a few. Experimental forms, such as John Carley’s zip, use caesura, or line breaks, to denote pauses, while other experimental forms, such as Denis Garrison’s crystalline, do follow traditional stanzaic punctuation rules. Consider Hip-hop, Rap, SLAM, and rant, as well. With “experimental” poetry, space is often used to serve the same purpose as punctuation (e.g., tabbing over on the same line; the dropping and centering of lines; running adjacent columns; creating shapes with words; and so forth). Bold-faced type and other devices are often used to provide accents or other forms of emphasis.

 

Since poetry is spoken aloud (i.e., performed), read silently and aloud to oneself, it is “heard” on many levels. I often find myself longing to hear a poet read their work rather than “just listening” to it in my own mind or hearing it uttered by my own tongue. Why? Because we enter into that poet’s realm of interpretation. The result (hopefully) is that we can hear their emphasis. We are then part of the poetic experience; it’s a social contract, a Sartrean “gift exchange.” " - Terrie Relf

 

 

"My punctuation is based on the lines themselves. I split them the way that I read them. Commas are not necessary if you do that. Once in a while, I will use one if I want to continue the thought on one line...but rarely. A comma represents a pause in breath, which can also be created by a line break. Words running together, also called “enjambment” can create an effect, often emotional, of speed, of flow, that following strict rules of punctuation would eliminate, thus hampering the poem’s flow, and perhaps meaning." ~Chris Vannoy

 

 

 

Also, there is a forum in an ezboard site called TheCriticalPoet's Poetry Forum.

 

This link leads you to Learning about Poetry, Grammer Forums which can answer specific questions about specific punctuations, word usage, etc.

[Katzaniel]

Without having read all of what Zariah found, I want to contribute this advice: Punctuate poetry like a regular sentence (use your sense of "there should be a pause here, a longer one here" as a guideline) until such a time as you might reach a point where you feel that you understand how to do that properly, and don't want to any more.

 

What I mean by that is that you shouldn't neglect punctuation "because you can" but because you know how to use it and neglect it out of personal choice. (Or neglect it only in certain pieces. Or don't neglect it at all. Or....)

[Alaeha]

I'd have to say I agree with Katz on the matter of punctuating poetry, for the most part. It's nigh on impossible to reliably indicate pauses without punctuation. I mean, sure, you can use line breaks to indicate pauses, but that turns your sentence "there should be a pause here, a longer one here" into

 

"there should be a pause here

a longer one here

 

"

 

and is just really awkward. Leaves the piece with huge amounts of ambiguity, which is great I guess if you want to reach out and touch a bunch of people randomly... but you don't know how they're going to read it.

 

Granted, you never know exactly how someone's going to read something, but punctuating it is one of those things you can do to narrow the list of possible responses a bit.

[Degenero Angelus]

Deggy walks in with the big stick of shut everyone up, and starts randomly whacking people with it

 

You're writing poetry, not a term paper.

 

Punctuate. it, however; you: want! too?

[Tanuchan]

Punctuation

 

Ellipsis... and commas,

semicolons; and periods.

Should I use a question mark?

or leave to the readers' imagination

How about pauses

do line breaks work

or do they just confuse?

And there are also the dashes -

who should be commas,

(or are they parentheses

suffering from identity crisis?)

At least the question mark

is something that leaves no doubts

it is a question, so it must be there

though the verb placement

should clarify that it is a question?

 

 

~~~~

Edit: spelling

Edited March 21, 2005 by Tanuchan

[Zadown]

That's absolutely marvelous, Tanuchan.

[Tanuchan]

*blushes*

 

Thanks, Zadown

[Mynx]

First learn the rules. Then break them.

Just something I heard once...

[Cyril Darkcloud]

Salinye,

 

Rather than thinking about whether one “must” use punctuation, it might be more helpful to think about this in another way. Obvious as it may be, the medium of poetry is language. Language, however, is much more than simply a collection of words. Language also includes grammar – a specific pattern of ways of relating words to one another – and an important aspect of grammar is punctuation. Attention to grammar, to the way one’s language works, is every bit as important in composing a piece of poetry as one’s choice specific words. This is not to say that one must rigidly apply grammatical rules, but that such things are significant enough to deserve a fair amount of attention and care in one’s composition – if they are to be bent, or broken or set aside it must be for a good and definite reason, otherwise the piece will in all likelihood be weaker than it could have been otherwise.

 

Poems have been written, and very good ones at that, with no explicit punctuation marks. However, the best of these pieces have tended to be grammatically simple and straightforward. Granting that, it is often the case that the lack of punctuation is a detraction from a work as the poem loses its sharpness and focus. A bit of ambiguity for the reader to puzzle over can be a good thing if it is carefully chosen and well used, but unnecessary ambiguity resulting simply from poor grammar or lack of punctuation is not. Skillful use of language involves skillful use of grammar and punctuation every bit as much as it involves the skillful choice of words and the greater one’s mastery of these things, the stronger his or her writing will be. Language is your medium – learn to be comfortable working with all of its aspects.

 

And so, punctuate. Punctuate not because that’s the rule, but punctuate to sharpen your own feel for the language you write in and use punctuation as a tool in your writing. Good poetry is not simply a matter of you the poet expressing yourself. Good poetry involves that self-expression of the poet making effective use of a language held in common with others in such a way that what the poet expresses might be felt and experienced by the reader. The language you write in is not yours alone, but is a thing held in common with others, and this commonality, a commonality of words and grammar, is what makes communication possible. Without such things as grammar and punctuation, we have only a collection of words lacking both sense and order. If a poet is able to connect words to meanings, ideas and sentiments, it is the poet’s grasp of the grammar of his language that will allow him to communicate these connections well, effectively and meaningfully.

 

Punctuate, but do so judiciously, for effective communication is what is important here. The more comfortable you become using punctuation in your poems, the more effective you will then be in relaxing the rules on those occasions where doing so can be a genuine benefit to your writing.

 

Beyond all else, however ..... Keep writing!

 

- Cyril