As IPAM passes the halfway mark, I bring you colons with this next post. And no, it’s not the kind you can find nestled around your small intestine. Though maybe in another dimension, I’d be a doctor writing a medical blog. Do people really write posts on goopy human insides? I guess that’s not that weird. I’m writing about a piece of punctuation, after all.
Just, no pictures—please.
All digressions aside, what inspired this post was the following passage, taken from William Strunk, Jr. & E.B. White’s The Elements of Style:
A colon tells the reader that what follows is closely related to the preceding clause. The colon has more effect than the comma, less power to separate than the semi-colon, and more formality than the dash.
Granted, it’s talking about prose and composition.
But for me, that sums up its use in poetry. A colon is not an anomaly but it’s not exactly a common piece of punctuation to use either; I see commas and dashes more often. But perhaps that’s just the way voice and syntax fall together when composed. Maybe it’s not usual for us to speak with colons, unless we’re listing—and list poems consist of a genre in itself.
Still, the excerpt begs consideration. The colon offers a unique advantage to other forms of punctuation and is incredibly successful when the situation fits. It acts like a beacon, a sign that what’s about to follow is “closely related” to what began. It’s a direction of insight, whereas the dash incites more of an interruption, a deflection. And unlike the semi-colon, colons provide a connectedness. Plus, it has that dramatic pause factor that you just can’t get with a comma.
Here, it’s easier when seen in action. The following quirky poem has not one, not two, but three colons in addition to a myriad of dashes, hyphens, parenthesis, and an ellipsis (which is a topic for another post).
THOMAS LUX
Wife Hits Moose
Sometime around dusk moose lifts
his heavy, primordial jaw, dripping, from pondwater
and, without psychic struggle,
decides the day, for him, is done: time
to go somewhere else. Meanwhile, wife
drives one of those roads that cut straight north,
a highway dividing the forestsnot yet fat enough for the paper companies.
This time of the year full dark falls
about eight o’clock – pineforest and blacktop
blend. Moose reaches road, fails
to look both ways, steps
deliberately, ponderously… Wife
hits moose, hard,at a slight angle (brakes slammed, car
spinning) and moose rolls over hood, antlers –
as if diamond-tipped – scratch windshield, car
damaged: rib-of-moose imprint
on fender, hoof shatters headlight.
Annoyed moose lands on feet and walks away.
Wife is shaken, unhurt, amazed.– Does moose believe in a Supreme Intelligence?
Speaker does not know.
– Does wife believe in a Supreme Intelligence?
Speaker assumes as much: spiritual intimacies
being between the spirit and the human.
– Does speaker believe in a Supreme Intelligence?
Yes. Thank You.
Nowadays, colons are used to convey emotion.
😀 🙂 😦 😛 😐 
:3
But plop them into some poetry and I’ll ask: aren’t they doing just that?
Poetry & Hums 