TERRY BOWDEN
How do I punctuate poetry

 
Some poets have been erroneously taught,
That at the end of a line they assuredly ought,
To place a comma, or even a full,
Stop or they'll be seen as a fool.
Stop!

     So if you are one of those unfortunate victims of erroneous teaching, please awaken the ghost of that teacher and tell him or her to write out 1000 times: "I must not mislead our future talented poets!" Any further punishments I leave to your own discretion, but be sure to mete them out until the demon is thoroughly exorcised.
      Here is an example from Scribble to illustrate the over-cooked comma:
 

Now it is but a few months away,
To that momentous moment that humans will say,
Why was I born on the new years day,
Of a new millennium.
Of course we all know, each day is the start,
Of each new era, of each new part,
The dates we refer to are so artificial,
They begin at the end, end at the start.

      By recasting the first sentence as prose, reducing leading capitals to lower case, we get:
Now it is but a few months away, to that momentous moment that humans will say, why was I born on the new years day, of a new millennium. Of course we all know, each day is the start, of each new era, of each new part, the dates we refer to are so artificial, they begin at the end, end at the start.
      Agh! What a nonsensical proliferation of persistent and flow stopping commas! Read that aloud, pause at each comma, and listen to how senseless it sounds. The excessive punctuation marks destroy the poet's intended flow of thought as the reader tries to interpret them.
    With a little knowledge of grammar (yes, it is spelt g r a m m a r .. try finding grammer in the dictionary), anyone can punctuate the above first sentence as follows:
Now it is but a few months away to that momentous moment when humans will say, "Why was I born on the new year's day of a new millennium?"

Now we can recast that as poetry:

Now it is but a few months away
To that momentous moment when humans will say,
"Why was I born on the new year's day
Of a new millennium?"

Personally, I blame sleepless nights on this pernickety mood. Has anyone got any even more minor complaints, or have I hit the zenith?

Terry Bowden
 
 

 timEd-B9 pernickety, pernickety, there's no one more pernickety 
Origin: Net-Picket, Devonport, Auckland, N.Z. 

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