Punctuation and capitalisation in poetry [closed]
Closed by System on Mar 17, 2013 at 06:39
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I'm writing a poem entirely without commas, periods, colons, dashes, emdashes, etc.
However, near the end of the poem I name a city and I want to capitalise it.
On one hand, I think it would be jarring to read the name of a city without capitalisation. On the other, though, it might jar to see an appropriately capitalised proper name in a poem entirely without punctuation.
The question, then, is: if one eschews punctuation altogether, then should one also eschew capitalisation, in order to be consistent? Or is capitalisation a separate beast from punctuation marks?
(As it happens, my poem is a response to this poem, also written without any punctuation. In this poem, there is a street mentioned that is not capitalised. This does not jar (to my reading, at least), but the lack of capitalisation does actually let the street name fade from view somewhat, which I think is a part of the author's intent. In my case, I don't wish the city to fade from view (nor do I want it to shout).)
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1 answer
If you're writing a poem, you are allowed to throw pretty much all the rules out the window. You can eschew just punctuation, just capitalization, both, split the difference per stanza or per line, whatever works to convey your meaning.
If it's significant to you as the poet that the city name should be capitalized, then capitalize it. If you've removed the capitals everywhere because it means something (the setting of the poem is supposed to be a monotone), and a capital letter signifies something else (a bright loud spark), then consider what capitalizing the city name will signify (this city is a bright loud spark!).
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