H'm, Arthur,
Yes, "pellucid..."
Aye, I can taste it! But it's not vegetarian! More sort of fishy... It's
sort of the type of food on has on Medeterainian holidays. Ah, hot nights,
no twilight - just the suddenness of dark, still shorts and T-shirts and,
inbetween picking up the not yet empty another bottle of wine... lean
forward to the table, open the mouth and drop in the taste of the last
pellucid...
Bob
>From: arthur seeley <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: punctuation ( arthur etc...)
>Date: Fri, 2 Aug 2002 17:50:42 +0100
>
>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
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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