Punctuation

[image error]…or lack thereof!

One thing I notice about my draft poems is that I often ignore punctuation. Sometimes that lack remains in the final draft, if I think that the ambiguously run-on approach works for the poem or that line breaks alone serve the purpose; but more often, punctuation is something I work into the revision process. Billy Collins tells an anecdote attributed to Oscar Wilde about proofreading a poem, and how he spent all morning deciding to remove a comma, and then spent the afternoon deciding to put it back in.

I do not devote quite that much time to commas. I do think that punctuation matters as an aspect of poetic craft and can convey more than we realize. The draft below, if I decide it is salvageable, will probably require some punctuation.

~

Down Will Come Cradle

She rocked you to soothing in her

warm young arms

do not forget how young she was

you so new

to the world you felt safe unquestioning

but look back

from yourself as you are now and

think of her

embracing your small body with her fears

and with love

she barely understood herself saying to you

what she’d heard

from her mother until she could confirm

in herself

secure against her novice worries as she

rocked you both

warm and soft and young in the

darkened room

where you now attend to her no longer

young neither

you nor she young but the mutual

comforting

continues the lifetime of strain and slack

you so new

to the process of soothing her how

easily

you rock beside her holding her hands in

your warm hands

~