For the Love of Punctuation

Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit Amazing Amy at The Poem Farm for Roundup.

Big thanks to all who have sent along octopus art and poems! Agnes and I are giddy, I tell you. Giddy! So much #octopuslove. And there's still room for me, so please, join the Octopus Month (October) celebration!
Here's the post with more information.

Today I'd like to talk about punctuation. That's because I've just read A BUNCH OF PUNCTUATION: Poems selected by Lee Bennett Hopkins, illus. by Serge Bloch (WordSong).

My relationship with punctuation in poetry goes something like this:

Who needs punctuation?

Okay, a LITTLE punctuation.

Ooh, I love that emdash!

In this new collection Lee brings us 14 poems by these fine poets/humans: Rebecca Kai Dotlich, Betsy Franco, Charles Ghigna, Joan Bransfield Graham, Michele Krueger, Julie Larios, J. Patrick Lewis, Prince Redcloud, Alice Schertle, Amy Ludwig VanDerwater, Allan Wolf, Jane Yolen -- and of course Lee himself.

Lee Bennett HopkinsIn fact, it's one of Lee's poems that I'd like to share today -- because I love it. It's about the comma, but it actually says as much about a period. I love when poems do that!

When I wrote to Lee to ask his permission to include the poem in this post, he offered some additional comma-y comments. Read on!

Comma
 by Lee Bennett Hopkins

A comma
lets you stop,

pause,

enjoy the weather,

unlike a period,
which puts an end

to any
cloudy,
rainy,
snowy,
or sunny day,
at once,
immediately,

forever.

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"Commas are very important. Misusing them can cause a lot of trouble. For example:

"I love cooking children and dogs." is not the same as "I love cooking, children, and dogs."
All hail the comma -- not the coma."  - Lee Bennett Hopkins--------
You never know what Lee will come up with -- what lucky readers we are!

I myself have written about punctuation a number of times. The shortest -- and strangest -- appears in FRESH DELICIOUS, where there's a "Summer Squash as Punctuation" spread. The visual interpretation is a little different than a traditional poem:

Illustrations by Mique Moriuchi
Summer Squash as Punctuation

crookneck squash = question mark
button squash - period
zucchini squash = exclamation point
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Have YOU written a punctuation poem? If so, leave your link in comments, because I'd love to read it!