Tag Archives: Punctuation

Punctuate Yourself

Punctuate, yourself.
A few points on punctuation.
Punctuate yourself!
Can we pull over, please?
I have to go punctuate.
But there’s nowhere to stop!
I’m going to runon.

Imagine you’ve just finished a possibly remarkable poem (into which you’ve poured the decanted, pure liquid of your heart and soul, not to mention other vital organs), if a poem can be said to ever be finished (be it ever so humble), in any kind of existential sense (which we know it can not – can never end), and the first, perhaps the only, criticism that is offered remarks on the lack of commas or periods – a comment on the punctuation used, or not used, in your poem, ignoring the fact that an apparent absence of punctuation is, still, a kind of punctuation. But in fact, your poem is called (critics love name calling) a run-on sentence. Or, in any case, that’s the only comment you get, that there’s a run-on indeed there is so you have no or little defense.

But punctuation is pertinent to poetry, and poets should take due care to punctuate their poems. What is punctuation? We often, maybe, think of punctuation as a tool used to separate. To insert. To come between. A wedge in thought and time, or speech. We insert a punctuation mark. We dot. We apostrophize. The punctuationist seeks to achieve stasis – no more morphological change, by which we mean the study of shape. Punctuation, then, suggests change. To mispunctuate is to risk sudden change in selection and variation – in other words, to introduce ambiguity (mutation).

Adorno wrote a short essay on punctuation, on punctuation marks, to be specific – as if punctuation consists of a kind of graffiti sprayed across one’s text.

Note how Adorno moves from anthropomorphic comparison to explaining writing as driving a car. And then apparently turns on the car radio, and there too, in the canned music, finds punctuation. He thus shows the difficulty of even talking about punctuation as it might exist in its own right.

We find punctuation endlessly interesting, and appreciate the attempts of our readers to find clarity and avoid ambiguity in our writing. Unfortunately, achieving clarity and avoiding ambiguity are often not the primary aims of poetry. What is clear is often opaque. What is meant is often not what is meant at all. This is not to suggest that poetry is a game of hide and seek (though that does often seem to be the point of the universe). Poetry may indeed be viewed as a kind of punctuation – where we insert in our day or night a comma or period of rest and pause, of relaxation, where, or within which, we may reflect and attempt to come to terms with our predicament.

Indeed, we might even say that poetry is punctuation. And punctuation is poetry, even if mispunctuated.

Comma Splices

If I wanted to use one,
I’d use two, one for me
and one for you, 4 to a
bar, 5 to a fence.

Comma connotes pause,
like a cat’s paw does,
when lifted midair.

Pick up your comma poops,
put in scoop bags,
and place in the trash can.

The Once and Future Comma Queen
will return to Gramarye.

Pause, and enjoy, an ice
cold comma, tonight.

Harmonic Bohemian Comma Scale:
lunula moon, clipped ring finger
nail, crow talon, gypsy jazz plastic
guitar pick, muddy udder rudder,
silent scythe, silver clacker spoon.

There is no substitute
for a comma, either
you use one or you don’t.

Comma rules form
a book of spells,
a Grimoire.

Comma Toes

Where to step a comma , 
to tiptoe haltingly , 
without readers tripping over it , 
losing their way. 

A comma pirate drops his  
     offshore   , 
as if it had a special purpose , 
a bouncing buoy ringing a bell , 
a porpoise out all alone. 

The comma critic , well-versed  
in elementary particularity , 
vacuums up all the fallen commas , 
the mote dust off a linoleum floor. 

The exclamation point shouts , 
a telephone pole poised atop 
a bowling ball !

While the ear shaped question 
mark asks the obvious ,
ad nauseam ,
comatose.
“Why all the questions!” “Why are you always shouting?”

Comma and Anti-comma

Is the comma in danger of extinction? Here at the The Coming of the Toads commas have fallen out of favor as we have begun to eschew the common comma, not all commas, and the comma in writing (where else is it used?) still remains an effective tool for the common reader, but sometimes the right word in the right place creates its own pause and nothing more is needed by way of punctuation, for the common reader or the anti-reader. Of course commas are used for more than to create pause. The comma used to separate items in a series, red white and blue, for example, often punctuated as red, white, and blue, keeps the colors from running together. The comma evolved from the colon and suggested something cut out but today the comma is used to add on, to amplify, to continue, to ramble on, sometimes unmercifully, the end nowhere near, the sentence a structure of lean-tos, each clause flipping about like a butterfly which may look to the common reader indecisive. Then there is the comma butterfly, also called angelwing, and what writer would want to eliminate angel wings from their writing, not us. Whoops, that’s anglewing, not angel wing, a mistake no comma can rescue. Still, the happy discovery that commas may suggest angel wings gives us a lift.

The Apostrophe of Waiting

You took away the source, but it was some graffiti, as I recall, but now in the grog of morning’s woke fog, I forget what it said, but one of the words was missing an apostrophe, crowds, I think, should have been crowd’s. The crowd is awaiting its apostrophe. So something is missing, the elemental that connects. That’s the meaning of apostrophe – an elision, but more, to turn, to turn away (from), even as things merge, as in a crowd. The apostrophe, like a stray bird, lands in the nest of merged things, its meld. The crowd is awaiting its possession, what it wants, its melt and weld. Also, the apostrophe that is an address to a missing person, one who has been turned away, or is turning away from another, as the crowd disperses. Waiting’s apostrophe. Waiting for the bird that has flown to return. As the crowd scatters, like birds, each one turning away from their neighbor, coming apart, each now a new apostrophe looking for a new gathering, a new mustering, a levy of birds, where they can drop into place to satisfy the whole. And today’s crowd of words is punctuated by the police, steel pot helmeted commas out to enforce the gravity of grammar, but they seem unable to put a stop to the run-on sentences.

A Brief Statement on the Comma

San Juan Islands FerryThe comma, which gives one pause; the comma which does not give one pause; the comma, at which point one pauses; the comma, a cockroach in the corner of the closet after all the clothes are cleaned out and the conversations are forgotten, hollow and cold; the comma that defies erasure, the comma that sticks; the comma that permits addition but sometimes subtracts; the comma a foot soldier, a drone wearily drove, the first key to fade; the comma a banana peal only a curmudgeonly grammarian with scruples would slip on; the comma a red light where turning right on the red without stopping is ok; the commas lined up like cars waiting for the ferry to return to cross over to the islands:

,,; ,, ,,; ,, ,,; ,, ,,; ,, ,,;   .     .       .         .           .            .            

Two Hep Cats and the Cool Comma

Punctuation Marks on Beach Trip Holiday

Scamble: I met a comma at the bus stop this morning. … Did you hear what I said? I said, I met a comma, at the bus stop, this morning.

Cramble: Be wary of commas. They’ll be on you like fleas.

-Did you know the apostrophe is the feminine form of comma?

-Band of punctuation pirates, the lot of them. Some witch of an exclamation point once hexed me into a pair of parentheses.

-Yes, life is hard enough without being labeled a parenthetical expression.

-Imagine impossible to break away from the vice grip of your parents.

-The bus stop comma seemed a cool enough little fellow.

-What was he up to?

-Just pausing, to say hello.

-I once dated an apostrophe, a beach volleyball aficionado, as I recall.

-Cool comma wasn’t going to the end of the line, Line 15, though, where the periods have apparently gentrified the neighborhood, the so-called Pearl District.

-No more comma splices. A few fragments, still.

-What’s the point of periods, anyway? We never really stop we get up and go again. He got off at the very next stop, the cool comma did.

-Why I prefer the express bus no all of that stop and go busyness biz.

–Punctuation implies patience.

A Few Salient Notes on the Point of Punctuation

Nail Punches and HammersWhat is the point of punctuation? When can we be sure our marks are correctly selected and placed, knowing our readers will often think otherwise! Or worse, won’t care :( `

No. Shouldn’t punctuation be like a trip to a good dentist who pulls your tooth but you don’t feel a thing? Later, you feel for the point of that missing tooth with your proofreading tongue. Say goodbye to sunflower seeds, those single quote marks that helped along slow reads at the center of summer late inning baseball games. (Who is you, by the way? – but we should save that issue for a later post, because it has nothing to do with punctuation, but with person.)

The narrator of J. D. Salinger’s Seymour – An Introduction [when do we place titles in italics or “surround them with quote marks” and omit italics?], Buddy Glass, one of Seymour’s brothers, offers his reader a punctuation gift:

“…this unpretentious bouquet of early-blooming parentheses (((( )))).”

But he then suggests the “bouquet” more accurately portrays his “bowlegged…state of mind and body….” Buddy speaks to you as if the general reader is a good old buddy, one who does not pack a red-pen mentality correcting as he goes like a noisy street sweeper the debris of punctuation through streets littered with pot holes and broken gutters with missing horse rings.

Salinger’s narrator’s bouquet has always suggested to me an Army sergeant at rest, as indeed J. D. was.

Is placing letters or words in italics a form of punctuation?

What is ` used for?

What are {/} {/} but no worries this is not a test but a post on punctuation.

From Adverbial Beach (by Joe Linker):

Gently the blousy wordiness finally quiet down not but up again and continually.

Usually superlatively long only this hour lately awake before four too early darkly to call this morning while lately too late to hope for a verbly sleep.

The apostrophe is a comma that evolved from the sea and learned to fly away. Bring an apostrophe down to earth and you’ve got a nice crowbar.

The best punctuation works like the nailing in a tongue and groove hardwood floor; you don’t see the nails. For side edged, top nailed floors, keep a nail punch and hammer close at hand for countersinking punctuation marks that will otherwise trip up readers dancing and sliding by in socks.

Punctuation is such a trip, hipsters in the 60’s used to say, but members of that particular generation of hipsters, pockets full of commas, are beginning to reach their final ellipses.