Pauses in writing\u00a0are personal. Or should be for the poet, at least.<\/p>\n
In my opinion a poem should be read as it is written, and thus\u200a \u2014 with all the many different lengths of pause, which punctuation and line breaks really<\/em> are\u200a \u2014 written as it should<\/em> be read and spoken. I call it \u201cpause notation\u201d.<\/p>\n See it as indication of rhythm\u200a \u2014 \u200aa control of breathing and presence, which adds up to the poem\u2019s own breathing. Pause notation is an indication of rhythm without indication of speed \u2014 as with music, the speed can be increased or lowered by the presenter or reader if only the relationship between the different pauses are observed: The duration of a comma pause maintains a fixed\u00a0relationship to the duration of a full stop, etc.<\/p>\n A poem, which thus has built-in pause notation, enables contact between the breathing body of the poet and that of the reader, which no mental aesthetic understanding of literary historical context can bring about. As such, a notation of pauses can enable a connection to the NOW, in which the poet completes the poem, and to the person, whom\u00a0the poet IS at that<\/em> moment.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n PAUSE<\/em>: A tense stay. Greek pa\u00fbsis \u2018to let something cease, hold something back\u2019.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [Punctuation pauses & grammatical pauses, from shortest to longest]<\/strong><\/p>\n You often see poems, where line-beginnings are all\u00a0in Capitals, even if the preceding line ending is neither full stop nor colon. This is an old way of indicating “new line”, and writing poetry like this has probably been programmed in via high school or the like – but Microsoft as the text editor of choice for many has a default setting: “Start every new line with Capital letter”, which has perpetuated the old habit among those using Office to write poetry, who never knew that it was not necessary. Reading such a poem should ignore the pause length of the Capital letter and only “sound” it following a full stop or colon.<\/p>\n [New line]\u00a0<\/strong>Tabular Rasa<\/em>, clearing the deck, making room for new. \u201cEmpty\u201d pauses from shortest to longest \u200a\u2014\u200afit them in by personal sense of duration in relations to the (length of) pauses indicated above.<\/p>\n [Tension]<\/strong><\/p>\n In addition to the length of pauses there is the indication of tension during recital, which is not pitch or emphasis, but the \u201ctension of the pause\u201d. A pause is not just a vacuum, a nothingness, idle waiting.<\/em> It is a bridge, a connection, between what happened and what is coming.<\/p>\n Maintaining inter-related tension in the whole of the poem \u200a\u2014\u200a giving\u00a0respective pauses the same duration and tension throughout the text\u200a \u2014 \u200ais what is the breath of the poem and thus the breath of the poet at the moment of completion.<\/p>\n Endings and beginnings<\/strong><\/p>\n Modern indicators<\/strong><\/p>\n \u2014<\/p>\n kenneth krabat, 2000<\/p>\n 2016 Update<\/strong>: Text messaging (SMS in EU) is changing the concept of punctuation as pauses. In a survey (published in Daily Mail) full stops used in digital text messages among young people were\u00a0regarded as less sincere and warm than ‘open end’. On paper there was no discernible difference in regards to warmth, spontaneity and sincerity.<\/p>\n How will such perception\u00a0influence the use of punctuation, indentations etc. as pausation<\/em> and emphasis<\/em> in both reading and writing what would then be termed “a controlled text” \u2013 as opposed to the ‘openness, warmth and enthusiasm’ of an unpunctuated\u00a0text (which by no means is UNcontrolled)?<\/p>\nTHE MUSIC and sound OF PAUSES<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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