Wednesday, September 22, 2004

How 'bout a course on commas,

like, how do they get used over different genres, how they mirror/break with prose punctuation, why some use them some do not, what's their history in poetry?

Or, how about a course on irregular, non-conventional syntax in poetry. I'm probably thinking most about "experimental poetry", but not exclusively. As a heuristic question for a course like this, "why are we able, or in some cases unable, to read and make sense of usages in poetry which defy the grammar we ostensibly use in the rest of our linguistic life?"

I guess there is the danger of either of these turning into a survey course, but the idea is that they treat whatever poetic works they look at as case studies and not exemplars of a style or particular poet. I just took this idea of special topics to mean like "carburetors" or "circuit boards"- useful technical information. or something.