Who Needs Commas?

Despite my dislike of Gertrude Stein's rejection of many forms of punctuation in her essay, "Poetry and Grammar," I think with poetry, she may be on to something. I used to punctuate most of my poems, but now I use line breaks as much as possible. Sometimes, I utilize punctuation. In fact, my reputation as a punctuation nut precedes me. For awhile, my classmates would ask if I had any comments about a peer's poem regarding punctuation. I can't overlook it when it's used incorrectly.

I live by Professor Mada Morgan's aphorism, "Whatever you choose, be consistent."

Sometimes, commas and semi-colons give poetry a clinical appearance. But, when used creatively, these marks provide as much power as words. A semi-colon, for instance, ties two not-necessarily related lines together; an old mare tows the heap of a car. That one little dot-and-tick brings meaning between a line of theory and a visual sentence. Written text practices magic.