Punctuations, Are They Important???

How do you feel about punctuations? Are they of value to poetry? Me personally, I think they are of value. The same things punctuations add/lend to regular writing they also do for poetry, and I like to make use of them. Although there are some out there who don't think there are as needed in poetry and that I personally use to many (commas mostly, in my case), I think they're a very useful tool. I personally do not have much favor to poems that don't make use of commas and just seem to be lines running together without direction, although there are those that find poems easier to read as such, I just find it to be lazy. Some people are confused and confounded by heavy usage of punctuation and I don't know why. I guess, they think the punctuations take away from the rawness of what you're trying to say, express. Take this comman/critique I got recently;

I really like it but I was distracted by all the commas. poems without punctuation can make a writer look lazy or stupid, but too much punctuation can ruion a poem. you've got something to say and the meaning is blurred by to many commas. if you rethought your punctuation and put more work into what you want to say I could probably hear it. but with all the punctuation there are some parts of this poem i just cant understand."

also

"Again i say commas. i read the first line of this poem and didn;t even finish because of your incorrect use of punctuation. use thoughts from your heart and your mind to say what you want, not what you think your english teacher would appreciate. you've got lovely worthwhile things to say being strangled by english grammar."

She didn't understand my comma usage and just saw it as a hindering nuisance in the two poems she read, but the commas were there, are there for a purpose. Often, I use commas to help set the rhythm. I try and write a poem to how it would sound, if I was speaking it. I try to pace it to how it sounds in my head, and sometimes I play around with word position - writing a sentence flipping the words around for better effect an the commas help it all to remain - grammatically proper, still, but as I pionted out, it's mostly a rhythm thing. If you read my poems aloud, you can usually get the effect and see how the interval pauses work throughout the poem in helping to set or establish a rhythm. Yes, I want the most proper grammar possible, but the commas serve as more of a rhythm pacer than anything else. Here a comment I got on another one of my poems in contrast;

"This piece was good to read aloud to catch the full effect of the pauses that the commas supply and was most enjoyable!!"

So, to summarize my main point, punctuations are very valuable tools - when use well and can be very effective in poetry, but this is just my opinion, what's yours???

Are punctuations important in poetry???

I think punctuations make a better poem also.. it makes it easier to read in most cases.. Nobody could say they would enjoy a book with no punctuations what so ever, because it would make no sense.. however some of my punctuation marks don't work, because the numbers at the top of my keyboard have stopped working for some reason *doh.. I do try to get it across in other ways though.. but still.. my opinion... punctuations along with grammar make a poem so much easier to read

I don't think poems need it. For example you can use line breaks to facilitates pauses and such. I think it just depends. Some poems need it some dont. You can leave out commas to pull the reader along or you can use other punctuation to emphasize rhythm/rhyme. I actually like playing around with it because in poetry you can kind of make your own rules with punctuation or anything, which is why it's such a good venue to express feeling, yet so challenging to have the reader experience it as you wrote it.

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