"A blog is to a writer what a canvas is to an artist." ~ Colleen Redman

Please Don’t Punctuate This

The bookstore clerk with the pierced lip called me Ma’am
while putting William Carlos Williams’ poems
into a brown paper bag
while ringing up the cost of the dependable red wheelbarrow
prominently placed next to a white chicken
on a page of unpunctuated poems

The clerk avoided eye contact
as he handed me my change
Does it show on my face, I wondered
that I’ve neglected to punctuate my own poetry
rejected the clutter of most commas
unplugged the dam of the period
while cursing the warnings of experts

Rules are made to break my heart
and the “love it or leave it” punctuation philosophers
would have me beg for an occasional quotation
question mark or exclamation

But the point is this:
I want poetry with the windows open
I want light airy room
and lines that don’t buckle
But when it comes to writing poetry
I’m a minority in the crowd
I’m riding in the back of the bus

Natalie Goldberg wrote down the bones
and poetry at the top of her lungs
She said poetry saved her life
She saved my life as a poet
She writes without punctuation like me
Or should I say, I write like her
since she is famous
and I am not
I am not

Does it show on my face?
Nikki Giovanni was driving the bus
when she turned to her riders and said
You don’t need punctuation
let the line break tell the reader when to stop

I sat in her creative writing class
the same year that Lawrence Ferlinghetti complained
(without punctuation)
that there was no Buddha in the woodpile
in Waco Texas when eighty-two bodies were burned

Bob Dylan’s been nominated again
for the Nobel Prize in literature
But is he a poet or a song and dance man?
Did Shakespeare write literature of plays?

Poetry is older than the alphabet
Before commas there was only the breath
to let out or hold back
and not until the Middle Ages
were spaces used between words
introducing the beginning of silent reading

Listen: I write poetry by ear
like the musician who doesn’t read music still plays
Dense poetry makes me drowsy
I don’t sleep well on the bus
and I can’t write in the clatter and chatter of the café
where Natalie doesn’t stop moving her pen
long enough to see me

In the end, like Rosa Parks
I don’t want to get up and go where I’m told
I work just as hard as any other poet
and I write from where I sit

~ Colleen Redman 9/07
Post note: The above was read at September’s Spoken Word Open Mic along with Mara’s pro-punctuation poem (details HERE). This month’s Spoken Word night is this Saturday, October 20th 7-9 at the Café Del Sol.

October 19th, 2007 Colleen Redman Posted in Poetics

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