A marginal question, no doubt…. What feelings do people have about the competing conventions of capitalizing or not capitalizing the initial letter of a line of verse? (I think the issue has arisen at Eratosphere from time to time, most recently in connexion with ChrisW's amusing "My Reflection Talks Back".)

Clive Watkins

I don't mind either way--but for my own work I prefer the convention of caps. Actually, most of the younger formalists do, oddly enough... If you're going to be formal, why be "neo" about it? (such is my logic, anyway.) Older folks as diverse as John Ashbery and Richard Wilbur also keep with the tradition. But I think most people now are used to seeing the "miniscules", and get a bit flustered at the sight of caps. Generally, you raise fewer eyebrows by going with prose rules of caps.

I think maybe it depends on such things as whether the verse is dominated by enjambment, and, if so, what kind of enjambment. For example, if a line is to begin with just one word that's been enjambed from the previous line, and then there's a period, it might not sit well with me if it is capitalized.

Also, if there are lots of stops (periods, semis, etc.) within the lines, it may be jarring to have "extra" capital letters among the interrupted clauses.

But on the whole, either way works for me.


[This message has been edited by Roger Slater (edited January 31, 2002).]

I notice that the issue tends to come up when the grammar flows on without pause across lines. In this case, Carol raised the objection primarily with respect to the most thoroughly enjambed stanza in my poem.
I personally like the capitals, but I suppose the more verse impersonates prose, the more disruptive or self-conscious the caps look.
(BTW, thanks for calling it amusing, Clive.)

[Now I look like I'm just copying Roger -- we cross-posted.]

[This message has been edited by ChrisW (edited January 31, 2002).]

I used to use initial caps, and I still kind of like the look of them. However, I quit using them after a session with a group of college students who claimed to find them awkward, stilted. Yes, yes, we can say I caved in to the quasi-literacy that is symptomatic of our general decline, etc. But these were smart, engaged kids who were making a real effort to appreciate my work and who were very interested in the nuts and bolts of formal verse. It seemed to me that if times had changed enough so that what really amounts to an arbitrary convention was keeping them out, or impeding their entry, at least, then why not adapt? I don't use "'tis" and "evr'y," no "thee" or "thou," after all, and those are actual SOUNDS. Initial caps don't even make any noise -- they just sit there on the page.
Now I have a plan to write a sonnet with no lineation at all and submit it around as a prose poem...
RPW

I'm with Richard, more or less. I used initial caps for seven years, then purged them. I don't miss them at all. They can create quite a fusty clutter, especially when there are formal names nearby. And they obtrude most notably on short-line verse. That's perhaps the principal reason why Tim Murphy has eschewed initial caps for three decades. The informality of uncapitalized lines also appealed to his youthful egalitarianism. Very likely Richard's contemporary students feel the same way. Tim and I are drawn to formal poetry by its music, not its appearance.

A.S.

i go back & forth. there is one mode i never capitalize,
& that's the unpunctuated free verse poem a la Mallarme &
Merwin. i guess i capitalize the first letter of every
line in periods when i'm feeling particularly archaic.
then i do so even in free verse poems.

[quote]Originally posted by Richard Wakefield:

"Initial caps don't even make any noise -- they just sit there on the page."

Yes, they're visuals. But in the work of great poets, they're invisible. Frost used them, but I didn't even notice that until about five years ago.

I think that they indicate that the poet feels that the line is primary and is under perfect control. They're vulnerable to looking mannered or pretentious if the lines aren't gems.

Bob

One place I've noticed, as a reader, that I don't care for them is following lines that could be read as enjambed or not. It's jarring to read what feels like a complete clause or phrase, think I'm taking up a new one in the next line only to find that the new line doesn't really go anywhere on its own, but needs to be connected back to the previous one.

I don't want to pick on Chris, because I love his poem, but these lines do that to me:

Of the light doomed to serve you as you pass
Judgment on your nose, your eyes, your ass)--

In my crit, I said I thought it was a clever line break, and I still do, but I don't care for the capital J.

Ginger

I ditched the initial capitals three years ago. It is no longer a persuasive convention, and I find it somewhat stilted. When everybody used them, I didn't notice them. Now that I'm spoiled to not seeing them, they irk me.

Years ago women wore hats and gloves to luncheons, teas, church, and in the military community, to changes of command. Eventually the convention gave way, and we all stopped wearing them to luncheons, teas, and church. I was glad, because I looked like Minnie Pearl or Ruth Buzzy in them. I got down to one hat, my "change of command" hat. I can remember the feeling of freedom I experienced the first time I decided not to wear it and lightening didn't strike me dead. I was the only woman there without a hat, but since my husband was CO, I was in the unique position of being able to please myself. On his outbound C of C, nobody wore a hat. Conventions change.

The point is, unless there is a logical purpose for it, a convention is just a convention. Somebody started it and somebody can change it. Everybody has to decide his own comfort level.

I am a stickler for punctuation and grammar, because clarity depends on them. But initial line capitals are an imposed convention that in contemporary poetry we must make allowances for and read around. They impede communication in the way Ginger just described, forcing the reader to go back and start again. Contemporary poetry uses a lot of enjambment. Initial capitals date back to a time when thoughts and phrases were contained in the line. The more enjambment we use, the less sense it makes to throw stumbling blocks to that enjambment in the readers' path.

Carol

DISCLAIMER: this post is tongue in cheek...

I wonder if lightning is going to strike Carol dead, not for the lack of headgear, but for the recent lightening of her emphasis on correct spelling?

(sorry, had to do it!)

(music)

My wife wears wild hats for pizzazz, even though she's completely bald, which I find cool.

Shameless O'Clawson

During Jane Austen's Day, it was an accepted Convention to capitalize all important Nouns. As Time passed, this Convention was dropped, probably because it was Exceedingly Silly (and is only used today for certain kinds of humor).

I tend toward the no capitals for each line side of the debate, though I have capitalized and not capitalized. With certain enjambment, it does throw me or trip me up. But I think that the convention itself is in a state of flux. So who knows if it will stay, gradually fade out of use, or be revealed as Equally Silly.

My bad, bear. Didn't even see it.

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/redface.gif

Hey there!

Just a quick note to thank you for starting this thread, Clive. And thanks to those of you who've contributed here.

My two cents:

Though I've learned to control the apoplectic fits I used to fly into upon encountering initial capitals, I'm still not wild about them. Perhaps because I tend to read stuff (and even write stuff) aloud.

True, those ol' initial capitals just sit there on the page, but I've got great peripheral vision; can kinda see 'em sneaking up on me. And I tend to lower the pitch of my voice (as one would approaching a period), even though that may not be what's called for.

And when I find that I've totally screwed up, that I've lowered my voice midsentence/midstream and have to begin again, I get all choked up and crabby. Ha! Not a pretty sight, believe me!

I'm the type who truly enjoys reading a poem over and over and over, but not because it's difficult to read correctly.

I agree on the "fashion-angle."
Initial capitals were all the rage once-upon-a-time.
But fashions change.

I suppose if one is writing a sonnet chock full of archaic language, one might want to go with the archaic-look of initial capitals. But otherwise, I really don't see the point.

Want people to want to read your stuff? Make it smooth/enjoyable for 'em! Ensure that any extra time the reader takes going over your poem has to do with fascination with the language you've used and/or the story/message you're attempting to tell/convey, not head-scratching, eyeball-rolling over misplaced capital letters.

Okay. That's it. Hope I haven't made anyone mad. As always, please keep in mind my newbieness and ignore any and all idiocy accordingly, eh?

Thanks again for a very interesting/informative thread Clive ! And everyone!

Happy week!

---Pua

I have to wonder how
Many would use
Caps if word programs
Did not insert them,

I know it drive me batty taking them out when entering a new line..

jejejeje

I was JUST about to post that word processors are responsible for the return of initial caps, Joan beat me to it.

There's 2 ways to fix it:

1: use preferences to disable initial caps on lines

2: use shift/enter to make a new line (this also allows paragraph-level formatting to be applied to each verse as a separate unit)

(music)

Bear beat me to it. Nobody needs to be bullied by a word processor unless he wants to be, but sometimes we have to crack our whips and assert our authority over the darned things to keep them on their pedestals.

Bear, es la segunda vez que has escrito jejeje. ¿Hablas castellano, o sólo cuando te ries? http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/smile.gif

Carol

[warning: Infodump ahead!]

Capitalising initial letters goes back a long way and
may predate the poetic linebreak. Early middle age texts sometimes mark the beginning of a line by a colour change or capitalisation (linebreaks wasted vellum). Maybe we should keep the Caps and get rid of the linebreaks.

The Uk's Simon Armitage write something about initial capitals balancing the final rhymes. He also said that they were like the fire-escape staircases in New York (?)

Now that we've all trashed Capitals, let me say a few words in their defense.

There is one very good reason for beginners to use initial capitals. They force the author to think more carefully about the integrity of lines as lines. I have often remarked that poets ought to consider line and stanza as analogous to sentence and paragraph. The challenge of writing a good formal poem is, at least in part, the difficulty of synchronizing poetic and syntactical forms. Initial caps encourage a disciplined approach to the fashioning of lines.

Note to Robert Swagman: ballad measure may override the objective of "paragraphing" stanzas. It is difficult to switch themes cleanly time after time in a long ballad.

A.S.

I like the idea of caps for lines as analogous to caps for sentences, since they are the "sentences" of the poem, as it were.

Again, I'm not AGAINST miniscules, to each their own. There are very good arguments for them. But I would say this--many have said how distracting caps are (to themselves, or their students, or other readers, etc.), so much fussy furniture best done without. Fair enough--but I wonder what do such readers do when they encounter English poetry pre-William Carlos Williams? Or what do they do when they encounter Richard Wilbur or Seamus Heaney or John Ashbery or T.S. Eliot? Or Wendy Cope or Robert Frost or Sylvia Plath?

Yes, yes, it is only a convention, perhaps an old fashioned one, but, frankly, it is a convention I would hope readers of poetry would be quite familiar with, and not at all thrown by. At least if they read anything other than contemporary literary magazines.

Alan,
I agree. Caps look more formal, too. I think caps or not can go back and forth, depending on the poem. I also have a point of view that a poem can be an 'object de art', much in the manner of illuminated manuscripts. The phrase is from the art world early this century, when artists began to see a painting as more than a framed window on scenery. Even Earnest Hemmingway said he often wrote by the words and sentences 'looking right'.

No caps often look more modern to me, and caps look more antique, and sometimes more golden, more worthy. But either way, if there is poetry in them there hills, it will come through.

Carol,

I have some gutter Spanish. I am a native of San Diego, and spent a lot of time on fising boats with Mexican crews. They taught me how to cuss in Spanish, no mean feat for a deaf man. Incidentally, my nickname on the boats was "Sordo". Or sometimes "Senor Sueno" in celebration of my ability to sleep anywhere, anytime.

In my "other" online world, where I administrate a social game-playing league (Cards, backgammon, dominoes etc), the "jejeje" has become something of a trademark in room chat, where we all acquire little quirks to differentiate ourselves.

My only other language, really, is Latin.

(music)

Hello, everyone!

Thank you for the illuminating discussion. I started this thread at the end of last month a few days before I had to be away from base for a while, and I now realize that, having asked the question, I did not get back to register my own view.

As it happens, Alicia has expressed my position very well, as follows:

"I like the idea of caps for lines as analogous to caps for sentences, since they are the "sentences" of the poem, as it were.

"Again, I'm not AGAINST miniscules, to each their own. There are very good arguments for them. But I would say this--many have said how distracting caps are (to themselves, or their students, or other readers, etc.), so much fussy furniture best done without. Fair enough--but I wonder what do such readers do when they encounter English poetry pre-William Carlos Williams? Or what do they do when they encounter Richard Wilbur or Seamus Heaney or John Ashbery or T.S. Eliot? Or Wendy Cope or Robert Frost or Sylvia Plath?

"Yes, yes, it is only a convention, perhaps an old fashioned one, but, frankly, it is a convention I would hope readers of poetry would be quite familiar with, and not at all thrown by. At least if they read anything other than contemporary literary magazines."

My own practice for many years has been to use initial capitals for all my metrical poems and to drop them when writing free verse.

Clive Watkins

The sentences of the poem are sentences, period. When lines enjamb, initial caps only distract. They call attention to themselves.

I wouldn't rely on grandma's method of birth control, I wouldn't sniff her snuff, and I wouldn't wear her hats except as costume. I might serve up one of her recipes, now and then, but I wouldn't want to acquire a taste for some of the ingredients, lard, powdered sugar, schmaltz. Consider.

Huh?

Clive Watkins

[This message has been edited by Clive Watkins (edited February 23, 2002).]

Translation: initial caps are old-fashioned, if not downright obsolete, if not downright ossified. The Plath case is interesting, but one must remember what a slave she was to convention, what a "good girl" who wanted to play with the "big boys." Were serious poets publishing without initial caps, in England, in 1960?

Not that I ever gave it much thought until now. If I've never used initial caps, it's simply because I haven't found them useful, probably because I'm in love with enjambment, momentum. Often, I even enjamb between stanzas. In that case, I've sometimes used an initial cap for the stanza but y'know what? Based on this discussion, they're comin' out.

When a poem is printed in a book, though, some kind of magic happens, and initial caps don't necessarily pose an obstacle to the reader. I suppose it is, ultimately, a matter of personal preference. I prefer rendering the English sentence in a natural way.

Dear Kate

Thank you for your "translation".

It seems to me that the use of initial capitals is a convention; this is not the same as saying that initial capitals are meaningless. I use initial capitals (as I know some others do) to mark the fact that a particular poem is metrical. It is clear that the expectation of many readers today is that poems will not be metrical. The establishment of expectations about the form of the poem one is embarking upon as a reader is an important part of the business of understanding.

Of course, among readers of verse in English (readers in many countries and cultures and of widely differing ages), it would be both foolish and wrong to expect unanimity in this matter. Like all conventions, this one has to be learned. I have no problem with this. Learning to read within the framework of conventions which other writers employ (both writers contemporary with me and those who are dead) seems essential if I am not to confine myself to reading only my own writings. It is one of the challenges and joys which reading affords. This is obviously true if we consider reading in languages other than our own first tongue; but neither of us, I assume, thinks that because you and I appear to be conversing in the same language that our versions of English are exactly congruent. The transaction of meaning is a joint activity between writer and reader. Both have responsibilities. Being receptive to the conventions of the writer (which is not the same as feeling obliged to adopt them in one’s own writing) is a responsibility which falls upon the reader. (Should we ask publishers reprint all the verse of the past several hundred years without initial capitals?)

What is more, most of us in our daily lives as social beings inhabit several, sometimes apparently conflicting, conventions and move easily from one to another, often without noticing. The discriminations and allowances you list in your previous note as between methods of birth control, snuff, costume and recipes illustrate this point from another direction.

(All of this is probably banal and - I would hope - unexceptionable.)

You say that it is "ultimately, a matter of personal preference", and this is probably true, though I would want to add the theoretical rider that, once a convention has become meaningful to only a very small group, it may serve to mark and so intensify the isolation of that group: others may not trouble themselves to acquire the convention.

As to your remark that you "prefer rendering the English sentence in a natural way", I would just observe that poetry is perhaps the most un-natural mode of organised speech. Poetry which appears "natural" is the product of an artfully contrived illusion. Other forms of artfulness are possible. To prefer one kind of illusion to another is to engage in a different kind of debate.

Intending a pun, I said at the start of this thread that this was a "marginal" issue. It has perhaps proved an interesting one at least to the degree that it has led you to change the way you will in future use the convention of not capitalizing initial letters!

Best wishes!

Clive Watkins


[This message has been edited by Clive Watkins (edited March 03, 2002).]

I was once in a literature class taught by a marvelously autocratic old Indian lady; when a student ventured to say something about the way a W.C. Williams poem was laid out on the page, she thundered, "We are not interested in TYPOGRAPHY!"

Of course, as poets, we have to take some kind of interest in typography, because we have to type our poems up at some point, and then we have to decide when we're going to press the shift key and the space bar and so on. But I think my teacher had a good point; capitalization is, as Clive said, a marginal issue. We are most of us more interested in the sounds and meaning of words, and the sound-shapes of lines and sentences, than in the visual formation of letters.

So I would agree that it's mainly a matter of taste. I use initial caps for something like the same reason my father, who went to college during the late '60s, wore a jacket and tie to class every day when all the other students were in jeans: sheer perverseness.

Gloria

What a thread! Before I trode on it, I thought using caps was more a matter of style. It is interesting to see so many knowledgeable peers provide logical explanations to its use, non-use, and misuse. I am surprised e.e. cummings http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/wink.gif has not been mentioned on this thread at all.

Regards,

Paddy

ee has now

I've waffled and wavered.

But as of this week, I say if a line is a line is a line
(by which I mean if a line has any meaning at all as a line in its own right and not merely as a pusillanimous excuse to look artsy-woopsy) :
then capitalize the first letter.

To hades with the wimps.

There is no point in resurrecting a TEN YEAR OLD thread - especially with an inane post such as the one you made, Chris! The topic has been discussed many times since 2002.

(Allen, I suspect you didn't notice it's an ancient thread. There's no need to reply to me - in fact, please don't.)

Jayne

Amen, Jayne.