Post
by David Campbell » Thu Dec 16, 2010 7:39 pm
G’day, Will
Many thanks for the words of appreciation, and you ask a very good question. From a judge’s point of view, metre is by far the biggest problem, followed by rhyme, and then punctuation, spelling and grammar all in a bunch. I’ll get to the punctuation in a moment, but please allow a small diversion first.
Metre causes the most trouble because it is so important in traditional verse, and yet it can be difficult to master. Some understand it instinctively, while others really struggle. Much like ballroom dancing. Some are poetry in motion, but others on the dance floor (like me) have two left feet. That’s just the way it is. Similarly, accurate rhyme is vital to written verse, because anything that is not quite right is immediately obvious. The written word is unforgiving, because, when it comes to metre and rhyme, it is there in black and white to be tested against objective criteria.
But, as you say, there are all sorts of rules for the comma, not to mention things like colons and semi-colons. So it is much harder for a judge to pin down correct punctuation, and thus a fair amount of flexibility is possible. I’ll punish over-punctuation (which is usually random punctuation) and lack of punctuation equally because most cases tend to be at the extremes. In other words, there’ll either be no punctuation at all except for capital letters at the beginning of each line (also wrong in my view), or else there’ll be a multitude of commas sprinkled in all sorts of odd places. Both situations are reasonably common.
But in between the two extremes quite a bit of variation is acceptable. Those who have trouble in this area should live by the rule that punctuation has to serve a purpose…it is there to aid the reader of the poem, showing where pauses occur and why. Stephen has referred to the advantages of musical notation in a separate thread, but my knowledge of musical notation is zilch, so all I can say is that commas, full stops and so on should act as signposts, guiding the reader through the poem and giving a basic idea of how it should be approached. The best way to illustrate this is to use a couple of verses from one of my poems and explain what I’m trying to do:
His voice is soft, his hands are scarred, his eyes a deep, dark blue,
and when he speaks of times so hard his words ring clear and true.
He says to me: “Those years were tough,” and slowly rocks his chair,
“but words are never quite enough to tell of our despair.
My parents wouldn’t take the dole…we called it ‘susso’ then…
I had to take an adult role when I was only ten.”
He sees my smile and lifts his hand, then quickly shakes his head.
“Don’t laugh, my boy, please understand…you’d hate the life I led!”
This is a combination of narrative (by the son) and direct speech (by the father), so the timing of pauses is very important for a reader. The first line is broken by four commas, each allowing for a brief pause to separate (and emphasise) different aspects of the physical description of the father. But the second line flows straight through because it represents a single thought that is most strongly expressed without any pause, until coming to a definite conclusion with the full stop.
Then direct speech is introduced and I use a colon to indicate a dramatic pause before the father actually begins speaking. It’s a change of voice, so needs a clear demarcation. It announces that something different is coming. However, the colon could quite legitimately be omitted and I’d never penalise anyone for not using one. For the rest of those two lines I’ve used commas to indicate brief pauses between the narrative and the direct speech.
The second verse is only there to show a use of the ellipsis (…), and again it’s just because I think it can be quite useful, though by no means essential. The ellipsis is most commonly employed to indicate that something has been left out, but I find it handy to use as something stronger than a comma, but not as final as a full stop. In the first line it creates an ‘aside’, an explanation of the common name for the dole during the Depression. However, two commas would also work, as would a semi-colon after “dole” (to indicate a separate, but linked observation) and a full stop after “then”. That’s what I mean by flexibility. There could also be a comma after “smile” in the third line, but I avoided a pause there to indicate that his raised hand followed immediately after the boy’s smile. In the last line I could easily have used a comma instead of the ellipsis, but wanted a slightly more dramatic pause to emphasise, along with the exclamation mark, the strength of “you’d hate the life I led!”
You’ll see from this that I consider punctuation to be an important part of a writer’s armoury, a powerful weapon to be wielded carefully and thoughtfully. But the best punctuation in the world won’t save a poem that falls down in the metre and rhyme department.
This has been rather lengthy, but I hope it all make sense.
Cheers
David