Since we have been taking a closer look at the role of punctuation in poetry, I thought I’d share a few poems so we can study individual style.
Punctuation does not NEED to follow grammar rules. Good poetry CAN follow grammar rules, though perhaps not to the very letter. Remember Kramer? Would you really want a poem to sound that pretentious?
A poet can learn the true weight of a period and the force of an exclamation.
A poet can also learn that punctuation can weaken a poem, make it less intense.
Great poets, I believe, use punctuation with intent. Was that question mark really necessary or did it just slow the read?
I have read wonderful poetry that did not use even one – even ONE – comma.
I have read wonderful poetry that used commas in odd places, allowed everything to dangle in wonderful fragments. For thoughts can be fragmented. And poetry is (to me) the love child of thought and emotion, as sharp as birth, sex or death.
So, take a gander.
I intentionally included the bios for these poets.
I figure if THESE people know what they are doing, then I think that I should try to look at poetry through their eyes.
I think the view is spectacular.
xoxox
Cyndi
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The following poems have been posted on this blog for educational purposes only.
And this is the letter
By Adeena Karasick
From: Contemporary Verse 2. Vol. 21 No. 4 (Winnipeg, Spring 1999).
And this is the letter that will not leave.
That I cannot write. This is the letter. The letter
that falls in its carrying. In the killing of
its crushing, its clinging
in its excesses and its masks. This
is the letter which lifts up and
travels from one word to another
grimaces in the torment of its
hardening. In its emptiness. In its own
contamination. This
is the letter buried without madness. Drowning in
its own inexplicable cry. And this is the letter, the
interletter
that does not write. Does not speak but in
nightmares. In the death of its enunciation which
rises, swells in
indefatiguable profusion. Renders its
presence in immediacy and madness. In hysterical
desire.
This letter of letters of doors, thresholds,
capacities, amplitudes, omissions and promises.
Depths and pleasures. That trembles with tension.
Stretched / in its torments of
glyphs, glas gloss / glassary rasp lisps
in its missing . In its
hiddeness and limits. In scattered separations
mocks in anxiety. In foreigness and deception
swells
into the letter this letter
sung in its horror, anger, agon. Suffers
in substitution, redistribution and bears the
unbearable, irrepressibly posited in
hunger and withdrawal. In staggered familiarity,
desire and exchange;
the letter of the letter that witnesses
and withstands its usage.
Bio
Adeena Karasick earned an MA in Semiotics at York University, and a Ph.D from Concordia University focusing on the intersection between deconstructionist and Kabbalistic hermeneutics. She is internationally recognized for her intellectual leadership in the discipline of poetics and theory, and the intersection between divergent modes of communication. Her scholarship has focused on the development of meaning, with special attention to the work of Marshall McLuhan, Derrida and L-A=N=G=U=A-G=E theorists; on the historical relationship between modes of communication and sociocultural phenomena; on the impact of new technologies and media on language practice; on popular culture phenomena including television, film, feminism, Conceptual Art and Kabbalah.
Adeena Karasick is also an internationally recognized poet and media-artist and author of seven books of poetry and poetic theory, most recently, This Poem, (Talonbooks, 2012) as well as 4 videopoems regularly showcased at Film Festivals worldwide. All her work is marked with an urban, feminist aesthetic that continually challenges linguistic habits and normative modes of meaning production. Engaged with the art of combination and turbulence of thought, it is a testament to the creative and regenerative power of language and its infinite possibilities for pushing meaning to the limits of its semantic boundaries.
Her writing has been described as "electricity in language" (Nicole
Brossard), "plural, cascading, exuberant in its cross-fertilization of punning and knowing, theatre and theory" (Charles Bernstein) "a tour de force of linguistic doublespeak" (Globe and Mail) and "opens up the possibilities of reading" (Vancouver Courier).
Adeena Karasick is co-founding director (Minister of Semiotic Turbulence) for KLEZKANADA Poetry Festival: Three Millennia of Poetic Subversion and an active member in a number of organizations, including Modern Language Association,
International Association of Canadian Studies, The League of Canadian Poets, St. Mark’s Poetry Project, The Writers’ Union of Canada, and the Poetry Association of America.
Among the honors she has received are: The Canada Council for the Arts, Spoken Word and Storytelling Award, 2011, Award for Professional Writers for This Poem, 2010; Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Award, 2009, Best Book of 2009 for Amuse Bouche, MPS Mobile Award, 2008, Exuberance is Beauty Award from AboutBooks for Amuse Bouche, Dorothy Livesay Book Award, for Memewars, as well as a Canada Council for the Arts Travel Award for both the Banff Centre for the Arts and European Russian performance tour.
the dogs
Joe Blades
From: River Suite. Toronto: Insomniac Press, 1998.
the dogs are restless
straining at their leashes
their chains
their domesticated masters
in mosquito and dryfly night
fireflies flash their here i am
in grass alongside this endless river
dogs pulling people along both shores
the dogs know me
and my living in the approach
of darkness—i am always here
sitting and watching this world
the steel blue-black river
breaks white with a leaping salmon
the air smells bladesian
with lightning from beyond
river stipples with scattered raindrops
the dogs sniff me out
but do not lift their legs
to claim this bench
the dogs read over my shoulder
as i try writing tonight
they thrust their heads in my hands
the dogs already own me
Joe Blades has been giving readings and publishing his poetry for over a quarter century. He is a writer, visual artist, and publisher-president of the independent, literary publishing house Broken Jaw Press Inc. founded by him in 1984, plus he is on the editorial board of ellipse magazine.
His poetry and art has appeared in over 50 trade and chapbook anthologies, and in numerous periodicals. Blades has authored 30 poetry chapbooks and limited editon artist books. His seven full-length poetry books are Cover Makes a Set (SpareTime Editions, 1990), River Suite (Insomniac Press, 1998), Open Road West (Broken Jaw Press, 2000, 2001), and Casemate Poems (Widows & Orphans, 2004), from the book that doesn't close (Broken Jaw Press, 2008), Prison Songs and Storefront Poetry (Ekstasis Editions, 2010), and Casemate Poems (Collected) (Chaudiere Books, 2011). Serbian translations of River Suite (Recna Svita) and Casemate Poems (Pesme iz kazamata) were published in 2005 and several other book translations into Serbian and Spanish are in the works.
Susan McMaster
From: Uncommon Prayer. Kingson, Ontario: Quarry Press, 1998.
Pavane
We have no choice but to see our friends
through these last pavanes,
no special claim is needed now
to bid us stand by the pattern's edge
bringing our wallflowers
to deck the gates, mark the days
music of eyes, voice, hands
that clasp and release
to a fervent beat, echo, mock
the now-stilled pound
of pulse and feet—
for moments more
your eyes still follow
my turn and return
measured pace
around your last bright
metal jewels
plastic beads of
water, air
I beat out steps
on the ward's hollow floor
you are dancing
to the sound
Susan McMaster (born 1950) is a Canadian poet, literary editor, spoken word/performance poet, and 2011-12 President of the League of Canadian Poets. She lives in Ottawa, Ontario.
Her recent poetry books are Paper Affair: Poems Selected and New (Black Moss 2010), Pith & Wry: Canadian Poetry (Scrivener Press 2010), and Crossing Arcs: Alzheimer's, My Mother, and Me (Black Moss 2010), which was a finalist for the 2010 Acorn-Plantos People's Poetry Prize, the 2010 Ottawa Book Awards, and the 2010 Archibald Lampman Poetry Prize. She is the author of several wordmusic collections, performance poetry recordings, and scripts; has edited poetry anthologies and series; and was the founding editor of the national feminist and art magazine Branching Out
And from me,
I COMES BEFORE
11:00 PM
Heads bowed over grammar.
Two, corked and uncooled.
Ceiling fan, a poor chaperone.
Distractions: dim clock, unset,
pulsing by his bed, unmade;
her perfect mouth, closed and close;
the dorm room’s corners tighten
around coarse cologne
and lipgloss;
lust
and eye contact –
there, the flash of invitation –
a question – answers - study
in deviations – such cocky dashes –
11:32 PM
Kiss quickening, now
a, lick, so like
a comma, dipping down,
slicking, rules, dis,cover,ing
a few shy, exceptions,
and the textbook,
that sullen textbook,
floored in the dust,
forgotten as their Tees,
get, off,
and that tongue, those nip-pulls,
and, that tongue, that tongue, reaching,
for, velvet open, ings,
skin and, lace, damp, en, in,g,
MIDNIGHT
They find freckles,
so like ellipses upon pale thighs
and they long keep the Latin in English
hips meeting for
a second cresting
(Lives later,
one dreams of lost fragments
while the other recalls
sweet and salty clauses, a passing grade,
and that slow fan at last cooling them)