Yesterday in Cartoon Saturday I offered up a collection of cartoons dealing with letters and numbers, symbols and punctuation marks. And wouldn't you know ... there's a poem in my collection that deals with the arcane topic of punctuation - a subject not much studied by many of those who hold forth online ...
On Punctuation
by Elizabeth Austen
not for me the dogma of the period
preaching order and a sure conclusion
and no not for me the prissy
formality or tight-lipped fence
of the colon and as for the semi-
colon call it what it is
a period slumming
with the commas
a poser at the bar
feigning liberation with one hand
tightening the leash with the other
oh give me the headlong run-on
fragment dangling its feet
over the edge give me the sly
comma with its come-hither
wave teasing all the characters
on either side give me ellipses
not just a gang of periods
a trail of possibilities
or give me the sweet interrupting dash
the running leaping joining dash all the voices
gleeing out over one another
oh if I must
punctuate
give me the YIPPEE
of the exclamation point
give me give me the curling
cupping curve mounting the period
with voluptuous uncertainty
Voluptuous uncertainty. I like that.
The weather today should be a bit better than yesterday, which is good because Agnes and I are going to meet fellow local blogger Kathy and her husband for a visit to the gardens at Mount Vernon this afternoon, and I take much better photos when I don't have to juggle an umbrella and a camera. Do your best no-rain-dance, please.
Have a good day. Come back tomorrow for a topical Musical Monday ... more thoughts then.
Bilbo
4 comments:
I like that concept too.
Commas, more commas, separating thoughts, and Texas laws.
Periods are rather authoritarian. Both kinds. I wish we used upside-down question marks and exclamation poonts like the Spanish do.
Have you read Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss?
A very entertaining read on punctuation.
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