Bob, thanks for your contribution. It is a prolonged exchange I agree but
interesting to me. As far as Latinate v Anglo-Saxon contributions to our
language.
I like Anglo -Saxon myself but there is a smoothness about the Latinate that
is seductive. I mean  honestly now wouldn't you just love to use 'pellucid'
in a poem.So smooth on the tongue you can almost taste it.I have submitted
an oldish piece in which I have tried to explore the typographical
conventions.Regards Arthur.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bob Cooper" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, August 02, 2002 4:04 PM
Subject: Re: punctuation ( arthur etc...)


Hi Arthur, (And all...)

You wrote, Arthur, "I reiterate that I am neither for nor against
punctuation in poetry. Myself, I prefer to use it. My argument all along has
been that since it is part of the battery of conventions available to us...
that we use it or not with intent, not whim and not default, and not,
please, laziness. I would never argue for an hour over a comma."
I say: Yeh, I think you're right... but I've known instances when I've
argued for almost that long over a comma in a poem (and, giggle-giggle,
isn't this series of posts one of those long arguements?)

And you write: "I prefer to think of Latin as being absorbed into English."
I hope it hasn't been, myself! Latinate languages have always hovered around
when we spoke celtic languages, and when the germanic languages got
introduced too. Maybe there may be some "latinate" words that sound as good
as anglo-saxon words... (yeh, I'm both joking and serious!). I'm prejudiced
I know, but I always seem to prefer anglo-saxon based words over latinate
based words - don't know why except they seem to sound better. And I'm not
just a germanic fan! I baulk at the complexities that are retained in some
northern european languages (all their cases for verbs etc...). English is
simple!! (Or is that because it's the language I speak that makes it seem
so?). Bit's got faults, tho. Trying to make clear that "You" can mean plural
when some people read it as "single."

And you wrote to Sally E: "We do not speak with punctuation, of course not,
but does not emphasis, inflection and pauses in our speech delivery
constitute a sort of oral punctuation and those emphases, inflections and
pauses are only available to us in the written language through
punctuation."
And I think that's right. And can I take things a bit further... take them
towards poetry? Because...

For me, in poems, I only worry about all of the little marks when I've got
all of the words. (I have a few marks scribbled along with the words but,
when I'm racing along, I've not worried about if they're the best ones - or
even in the best places!). I also sense each poem develops its own shapes,
its own sounds, as it's being written and the punctuation's there to try and
clarify things for the reader. And I'm the poem's first reader so it's got
to work for me before it gets to anyone else.

So, I guess as I'm playing with what I've got I have to remember that each
poem has the possibility of using its punctuation in a different way to any
previous poem. I guess, though, I'm not the only one who imports rules that
have worked for us in past poems - and struggles to use something new! I can
remember once recognising that I always ended each stanza with a full stop
(completing a sentence!) and how I needn't always do that!

At the moment full stops, commas, Italics, and dashes, are what I now favour
in most of my poems - they seem to fit the tone. But I know I sometimes find
I need to use long gaps, semi-colons, colons, capital letters that are not
at the start of sentences, whole words in Capital Letters, and other devices
to help the reader see (and hear) what I'm trying to write. There's also
things I've never yet used myself (ever): indented lines, colons at the end
of a poem instead of a full stop, small case letters to start a sentence, a
small case I (I mean i), a person's name without a capital letter, an &, or
no full stop at the end

I guess (as I think I mentioned in a comment to Gary) punctuation seems like
controlling a bike that's freewheeling downhill: when and how much of a dab
on the brakes we need to slow things down, which brake to use (or both
brakes), how slow we need to be to get through a tricky bit, when to stick
out a leg, when to go really fast, and - all the time - how to keep near
enough in balance, how to get there, how not to fall off...


Bob








_________________________________________________________________
Join the world's largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail.
http://www.hotmail.com