Thread: Poetry and Punctuation

Someone made a comment on one of my pieces suggesting that I might improve the punctuation, or lack thereof, in my poem. It made me wonder...does poetry have to be correctly punctuated?

I think a comma can change the meaning. It also let's one know when to pause.
I personally think more highly of a correctly punctuated piece.

Many people now days use no punctuation in a poem at all. I think it can work well with the shorter pieces, but the longer ones usually seem to need punctuation. You can only do so much with line breaks and they can't always be used to cause a slight pause without impacting the visual effect of your poem.
A poem that is inconsistent with it's punctuation, feels haphazard to me. So I think that you either forgo punctuation completely or do it correctly and consistently throughout the whole poem. This is my personal view and I certainly don't expect that everyone will agree with it.

Till I came here, I'd never noticed that people write poetry without punctuation. Or maybe I never noticed it. (Recently, I've even come across famous Indian poets who write without it. I felt betrayed. *sniff* ) Personally to me, poetry feels incomplete without punctuation. But now after going through so many poems without it, I feel they should make a rule or something - either use, or do not. Do not have any "you can; or you can not - really up to you". I mean, how would it be for people who take the pains to understand how to use punctuation (because I've seen some do that), and then later on hear they could have written without it as well?
Again, my personal views. Each has a different one. But I really feel this should be officially cleared up in the whole English Language World.

Nothing about poetry will ever be cleared up in the whole English Language world. People can't even agree about what poetry is.

I agree with Gumby's view on punctuation. I prefer to see a poem properly punctuated but I follow the school of thought that poems should be punctuated properly when punctuation is used. Haphazard us of punctuation spoils a poem and it's better to have no punctuation at all than to use it irregularly.

Just curious. So poetry without punctuation is officially accepted?
That question sounds wrong, even to me. There, my whole view on poetry comes crashing down. I think I'll need a few days to accept that fact, shut myself in my room for a few days.

Originally Posted by candid petunia

Just curious. So poetry without punctuation is officially accepted?
That question sounds wrong, even to me. There, my whole view on poetry comes crashing down. I think I'll need a few days to accept that fact, shut myself in my room for a few days.

This Wiki article may be of interest to you. It doesn't really clarify a lot but does explain why things are not clear.

Poetry - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thanks for sharing. Knocked a bit of sense into my head. You can't really have rules for art, so I guess that's it

Originally Posted by 32rosie

Someone made a comment on one of my pieces suggesting that I might improve the punctuation, or lack thereof, in my poem. It made me wonder...does poetry have to be correctly punctuated?

I believe the key in all this is the word "improve" - punctuation is a tool and in poetry more so could be used as reading marks. This is specially true when a line of verse can be read in several ways (even two ways can be confusing) it helps guide the reader as to the inflexion and the diction in the line thereby affording the full potential of nuances in meaning and creating tone and all that. So to improve the reading of the poem as the poet intends it to be read, punctuation can be very useful. Over punctuation or poor punctuation can thus ruin a good poem or in the least a good reading of a poem.