"iS Slapped:with;liGhtninG": Punctuation and Meaning

                                

                   Punctuation gives us the human voice, and all the meanings that lie between the words.

                               —Pico Iyer

            When language was chiseled into stone slabs in ancient Greece, the writers had to save space, so they left none between words.  Words ran together and became confused.  So the first punctuation element was a dot suspended between words to separate them.  Later, space itself was used to separate—to punctuate—words.  White space includes word spacing; paragraph, stanza, section and chapter breaks; and book covers.  Capitalization—a word derived from the Latin caput—was originally used to indicate either a new head(ing) or the name of a head of household.  So white space and capitalization are punctuation, as well. 

            Let’s remember that poetry has changed from the predominantly oral and physical art of the itinerant bard, to an increasingly visual medium on the page.  The voice inflections of the live poet have to be recorded on the page, like sound on a musical score, to indicate pacing, meaning, and emotional nuance. But we must also reconstruct the physical gestures of the poet, for, as W. B. Yeats tells us, art comes from the “fountain jetting from the […] sensations of the body.”  Mining the etymologies of the names of punctuations, we can re-embody the hand gestures of a bard. The gesture is like that of a cupped hand waving things apart.

            In terms of punctuation, poetry falls somewhere between the pyrotechnics of ee cummings, and the spareness of W.S. Merwin, who punctuates only with white space, capitalization, and traditional apostrophes.  Considering that most poetry falls somewhere between these two extremes, we can better appreciate the synaptic and expressive power of punctuation. 

Here is an eleven-line excerpt from section XXXVIII of cummings’s “W (Viva),” which includes the title of this essay:

n(o)w                                                                                       1

the                                                                                  2

how                                                                                         3

dis(appeared cleverly)world                                             4

iS Slapped:with;liGhtninG                                                       5

!                                                                                               6

at                                                                                          7

which(shal)lpounceupcrackw(ill)jumps                                     8

of                                                                                             9

THuNdeRB                                                                             10

loSSo!M iN                                                          11

            cummings renews our sense of the uses of punctuation by playing meaningful counterpoint with the norms.  For example, in the first line he parenthesizes the “o” in “now,” creating a tension between the words that that suggests: “now,” “no,” “o,” “ow,” and even “nw.”  How appropriate a response to a lightning storm, which forces a sense of urgency and nowness on us, and the ambivalent reactions of “no,” “o,” and the wincing “ow.”  With its “o” dropped out, “nw” feels sudden.  Visually, the parentheses create a whirlwind around the eye-of-the-storm “o.” 

            In line 5, cummings capitalizes the second instead of the customary first letter of “iS,” thus aligning and amplifying the sound “S” with the capital “S” in “Slapped,” the following word.  The sound effect sizzles, as lightning does.  Had cummings not capitalized the “S” in “iS,” the “is” would have had merely a “z” sound. Also, he would have lost the surprise effect of “S,” which mimics the surprise of lightning.  Instead of white spaces to separate the three linked words in line 5, cummings used a colon and semicolon, punctuations traditionally used to separate much larger units of language.  The colon functions like two pointing index fingers:  LOOK AT THIS.  “Slapped,” like lightning, is sudden and clipped, especially with the colon following it.  The word “with” is slapped—struck—between the muscular punctuation marks of the colon, and the semicolon (half comma and half period)—as lightning is surrounded by the expansive dark before and dark after it.  Because we have become accustomed to white spacing between words in the five centuries since Gutenberg, there is tremendous tension between our expectations and the surprise of this line.  Even more unexpected is the word “liGhtninG,” whose capital Gs flash, and flash into our eyes, as lightning would.  cummings’s choice of capitalizing the Gs is especially meaningful, since the letter is often an initial morpheme in words related to visual experience, as in “glow,” “glimmer, “glance,” “goggles,” “gaze.”

In contrast to cummings’s punctuational exuberance, W.S. Merwin has an ascetic aesthetic.  Consider the last three lines from his poem “Just This,” in which Merwin also works with lightning:

how did this haste begin this little time
at any time this reading by lightning

scarcely a word this nothing this heaven

By not punctuating the first line of this excerpt, Merwin encourages us, as readers, to enact the haste about which he writes.  We can read “begin” as a transitive verb with “this little time” as its object, so that haste literally “begins” time.  This is quite true:  To be in haste is to be pressed for time, and so very aware of it and its passing.  We lose our sense of time when we are absorbed and leisurely.  So time does begin when we are in haste.  “Begin” can also function as an intransitive verb, with “this haste,” and “this little time” parts of a series of subjects.  In either case, the rushing through to figure out the syntactical relationships in the line (which the lack of punctuation creates) is like a rush of lightning.  That we may be confused on first reading reflects the usual consequences of haste.  If Merwin had punctuated these lines according to the second, intransitive reading of the verb, it might have yielded the following possible translation:

How did this haste begin, this little time

(at any time), this reading by lightning

(scarcely a word), this nothing, this heaven?

So marked, the poetry changes significantly.  The commas cut in, cut off, and weigh down.  We are certainly more sure of how to interpret this version of the lines, and less, therefore, in the more hesitant experience of “reading by lightning.”  The parentheses show the paralleling of the “this______” constructions, but minimize the import of the phrases they peripheralized.   The final question mark is a strong end punctuation.  Although a question, it nonetheless creates a finality that the unpunctuated words do not imply.  On some readings, the lines become a rhetorical question, which actually is an assertion inviting no further response.  In Merwin’s version, nothing and heaven are followed by a drop off into white space—a far more provocative experience for the poem.  By providing only white space in these lines, we are left to our own interpretive devices.  And that, after all, is the truth of reading poetry, of reading by lightning—that there is no final meaning.  

In my own poetry, one of my favorite punctuation breakthroughs was in a work originally titled “F.Y.I.: An Interoffice Memo.”  In this poem, a young woman addresses a business colleague who both attracts and repels her by his sexual overtures. In the early drafts of the poem, I used traditional punctuation, clearly marking off phrases and sentences and lines.  I soon realized, however, that these clear demarcations contradicted the psychological blurring and testing of boundaries between the two characters.  Here are the first two of fifteen stanzas:

 

F.Y.I.: An Interoffice Memo

Behind the sweating cinderblock wall between them,

he sucks Merit butts and True Blue.

Smoke smolders around his doorjamb.

She emerges from her side to ask him not to.

He responds, Open your window, and belches

the belch of someone who always can.

The title is too sure of its boundaries—the periods after the abbreviated words For Your Information too defining.  The colon functions like two pointing fingers that know what they are indicating.  Period/end of sentence: there is nothing smoky and wavering about “Smoke smolders around the door.”

The current first-person version is as spare of punctuation as Merwin’s poetry is: Here are the title and first two of thirteen stanzas:

F Y I  Need to Talk

Between us  the cinderblock wall

Its sweat  grit  and empty cores

You puff True Blues and Now

To smoke a frame around your door

Where I wait to ask you

Again  to open your window

The first, highly punctuated title was rhythmically and thematically inappropriate.  Pulling out the punctuation, I realized that what followed the colon was dull and too-self-explanatory.  “FYI” is only used as a memo heading for “For Your Information,” so why define it as such. When I tried “FYI,” I saw a further opportunity for ambiguity.  “FY” can be an acronym for “F____ You” and the “I” can either be the first person pronoun of the sentence “I Need to Talk,” or short for some slur, such as “Idiot.”  But there were not enough cues in “FYI” to invite alternate interpretations.  I brought my puzzlement to my Senior Writing Seminar as a punctuation challenge, and my student Abigail Avis cleverly suggested the title I finally kept: “F Y I Need to Talk” allows for several groupings/interpretations by a reader, including, but not limited to, the following:  (1) a traditional office memo: “F.Y.I.: Need To Talk”; (2) a curse and request: “F. Y.: I Need to Talk”; (3) a curse and slur of the other: “F.Y., I(diot):  Need to Talk”; (4) a curse of other and self  (although it should be “me”) “F. Y. (&) I: Need to Talk.”  

          Syntactically the poem shifts and reshifts as the woman experiences her ambivalence—her connection to and separation from her colleague.  The white spaces mimic the undefined spaces between them.  The unmarked enjambments rush us toward the next lines, much as the woman approaching the man. As readers, we may be tempted to read in the missing punctuation, thus inviting us into a voyeuristic relationship with the characters.  Honoring Merwin’s punctuation aesthetic enriched the poem and made it more dynamic. Here is the full current draft:

F Y I  Need to Talk

Between us  the cinderblock wall

Its sweat  grit  and empty cores

You puff True Blues and Now

To smoke a frame around your door

Where I wait to ask you

Again  to open your window

You will belch the belch of one

Who has no need to state

My office  my lungs  my gut

Words to stun

My eyes will tug at your eyes

Don't gaze down the length of my hair

To my left breast

My hand a cameo at my throat

My elbow a shield

I'll say something about breathing

Tantric yoga  you'll say

Best kind of breath   I won't

Understand   You'll say

All those naked yoga positions

I'll tell you love

Is a poem   You'll say

Emily Dickinson was an S&M

Lesbian  black leather and studs

Under white piqué   I'll say

Love is an art

You'll say  Sex is a ribbed Trojan

My ears  like vacuums  will draw

Forth your words to hang

Like swollen tongues from your lips

Your sentences will build around you

Like the cathedral of excrement

One tropical caterpillar

Sculpts around itself to say

To birds  You don't want me  Please

Don't eat me I lift  now  my fist

Miss Liberty  

Rock of desire  chisel of

Despair   strike the match

Acknowledgements:

cummings, ee. “W (Viva).” Poems 1923-1954. New York: Harcourt, 1954.

Merwin, W. S. “Just This.” New Yorker. 6 June 2005.

Rich, Susanna. The Flexible Writer. 4th ed. New York: Longman/Allyn & Bacon, 2003.

---. “Slapped:with;liGhtninG: Poetry and Punctuation.”  In Mentor and Muse.

            Ed. Blas Falconer.  Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2009.