[John Whitworth]

Competition: Pause and effect

LUCY VICKERY
SATURDAY, 28TH JANUARY 2012

In Competition No. 2731 you were invited to supply a poem in praise of punctuation.
An excellent entry, this. Space is tight and I very much regretted not having room for Alan Millard, David Duncan Jones and Frank Osen in addition to the worthy winners below.
The bonus fiver belongs to Basil Ransome-Davies. The rest pocket £25.

I dallied with a comma whose cute curves had made me pause
And catch my breath, if only for a second,
But she’d a wild obsession with an adjectival clause
Whose charismatic syntax always beckoned.
My rebound squeeze, a semi-colon eager to be kissed,
Proved versatile, a mark of many talents.
She had the power to subdivide a rather lengthy list
Or function as the pivot of a balance.
And did I stop there? No! Get this: I nursed a massive ‘pash’ —
An adolescent crush — for punctuation.
I venerated hyphens; worshipped quotes; adored a dash.
It was an out-and-out infatuation.
Parentheses and pilcrows always set my heart on fire.
It throbs until I think my veins will pop.
Apostrophes (used rightly) I exceedingly admire.
It’s the romance of a lifetime, this. Full stop.
Basil Ransome-Davies

How do I use you? Let me count the ways.
Full stop, though you are just a simple dot,
You’re quite the most important of the lot:
Without you either style or reason strays.
Unmarked, some quote or question soon might faze
A reader (in parenthesis or not);
Smart colon and your semi form you’re what
Denotes a list, a clause, though not a phrase.
The trickiest, my dear apostrophe,
Gives scope for me to mock my less skilled foes.
I use you all, but, little comma, you
Deserve my love because you render me
The chance to pause, admire my verse and prose —
And, dash it all, exclaim about it too!
Alanna Blake

We do not come as minding to content you,
Our true intent is. All for your delight
We are not here. That you should here repent you,
The actors are at hand... Thus on the night
Of a midsummer dream did Peter Quince
Fail, in the rude mechanicals’ Thisby drama,
To ‘stand upon his points’ — which should convince
Writers and readers how we need the comma
And all time-honoured marks of punctuation:
Full stop, round brackets, semicolon, dash,
Sign flagging query, sign for exclamation
(Think of Sylvester’s ‘Sufferin’ succotash!’).
We prize and praise these symbols; one suggestion:
Return the interrobang to service. Will
We not find that fused ejaculation-question
Makes Quince’s points to stand on better still?
Ray Kelley

These extra-alphabetic furbelows —
Brisk dots and strokes, alluring curves and hooks —
Give to our writing (poetry and prose)
What speech gains from our gestures, breathing, looks.
Shakespeare’s and Donne’s meander, Pinter’s stall,
Dialogue’s ping-pong and its range of moods —
Is it by grace of these meek marks they all
Possess in print the voices’ attitudes?
Without these, meaning’s bound to go astray;
Without these, comprehension hits the skids;
Without these, we’d be fool enough to say,
‘That wet mess in the kitchen is my kids’.
All hail Lynne Truss, of panda volume fame —
A text so bright, so cranky, so divine!
To her wit in the pages of the same
I trace that ‘wet mess’ joke in the 12th line.
Chris O’Carroll

Like little taps and valves, they regulate
the flow of language on a page. They tell
us where to stop and where to breathe, create
a tracery between the words; excel
at silence, guide us through the maze of meaning —
indicate doubt by means of a hooked symbol(?)
(provide parentheses for quarantining
those wayward thoughts) — are slyly neat and nimble.
How could we read, without them, Milton’s roll-
ing thund’rous lines? or e.e. cummings’s
eccentric verse? or share a wassail bowl
with dear Anon? The hyphen, the ellipsis…
inverted commas, hold me in their thrall;
th’apostrophe, the dash — I love them all!
Gerard Benson

Applause, applause! Apostrophe,
The audience love your subtlety
Putting possession into focus.
(Tonight they’re not, of course, green-grocers).
Our pantomime would be a flop
Without our regal Dame, Full Stop,
The most familiar of our cast,
A trouper to the very last.
Gaunt Exclamation Mark! stand tall,
Although you’ve been abused by all;
You and the chorus shout so loud,
Beloved by all the common crowd.
Come, Comma, yours is the bouquet,
As raison d’être of this play,
Whose beauty every sense transmutes,
The heroine of Eats, Leaves and Shoots.
D.A. Prince