Outta the Blocks, cont’d…

More Overcoming…

 g.) To punctuate or not to…: Another hair- pulling contest. Somewhere along the line, someone thought it would be cool, cute or trendy to remove capitalization and modify or creatively remove punctuation from “poems.” Hmmmm?

In some pieces, this minimization can actually allow the essence to flow more easily from one line to the other without “bumping” at a capital or diggit of punctuation that takes the attention away from mood and thought to pause and chew at the punctuation’s usage. Loss of focus. Conflict. Of late, there seems to be a resurgence in this bare bones presentation. The other side of the coin to be considered…

Does one remove all Capitals? the capital “I”, the capitalized proper nouns of persons, places, religions? What conflict will occur if an uppercase is removed from a proper noun and that same word happens to be paramount somewhere else in the piece: the race was to be held on race street (?) mrs flag watered her flag (?) — similar to “bumping” on punctuation (previously mentioned) now, we “bump”, pause and lose focus, trying to mentally sort the conflicting or confusing nouns.

Removing punctuation: Does one remove all punctuation? the: base line commas, periods, semi-colons, colons? What of hyphens? Apostrophes: what is to designate possession, plural possessive, contraction? A quotation?

Some writers leave an extra space in lieu of a possessive apostrophe—what then of the plural possessive apostrophe that occurs behind the word’s last ”s”? “Chriss’.” A space where a contraction occurs? “can t.” What of an “M” dash, a question? What of numerals?

The primary goal in the style one selects, is to not only present a particular “trademark” appearance, but more so, to ease the reader through the poem in a somewhat conventional and flowing manner. Too many scribing “tricks” only makes reading more difficult and turns the reader away.

Keep it concise and brief, cooking that frog while falling from that ten story building…

Bon appetite,  Max tdc