Space (punctuation)

"Poets' Punctuation": a talk by Charles Lock | Boston | 2015

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• published: 04 Mar 2015
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Title: "Poets' Punctuation: Thomas Hardy, Ezra Pound and the technology of accidentals" Speaker: Charles Lock Venue: Editorial Institute, Boston University, Boston MA Date: 3 March 2015 Poetry Shack is grateful to the speaker and the Editorial Institute for their permission in allowing us to film this presentation. About the speaker: Charles Lock has been Professor of English Literature at the University of Copenhagen since 1996. A Senior Scholar of Keble College, he received his D.Phil. from Oxford in 1982 for a dissertation on John Cowper Powys. In 1979 he was awarded the Laurence Binyon Prize (a University Prize) in the History of Art. He taught for two years at the University of Karlstad, in Sweden, and from 1983 was at the University of Toronto where he was appointed to Full Professor in 1993; he was also adjunct professor at Toronto in Comparative Literature, Russian and East European Studies, Religious Studies, and Medieval Studies. About the talk: Punctuation matters always, but it takes on a new force and significance in early twentieth-century verse. Ezra Pound's devotion to Hardy may be understood in these terms, especially if we look upon the spaces between words as a species of punctuation, as in the first printing (Poetry, April 1913) of Pound's 'In a Station of the Metro': "The apparition of these faces in the crowd : / Petals on a wet, black bough ." The multiple tab spaces that can be inserted between words, and between words and punctuation marks, can be indicated only by typewriter. The typewriter enables the poet to remove from the printing house what we can call 'spatial authority'. Subsequent developments of free verse and the eccentricities of its lay-out depend on this technology, at least until the coming of the word-processor, whose control over space is much weaker than that of a typewriter. Among the last of the 'typewriter' poets is Robert Duncan who made of New Directions demands unprecedented in the history of printed verse." _ _ _ _ About the slides: The camera used to record this talk was unable to capture the images shown on the projection screen. Here is a list of the slides, indicating the slide contents, the time they are referred to, and a link where the slide image can be viewed online. Slide 1, at 0:00:50. This "optical chart" is the presentation of a well-known poem, showing only the punctuation and beginning capitalization. [view this image at http://bit.ly/ps-00001] Slide 2, at 0:12:57. Cover of the first edition of Franz Kafka's "The Process", edited by Max Brod (1925). [view this image at http://bit.ly/ps-00002] Slide 3, at 0:12:11. Cover of the first edition of Franz Kafka's "Der Heizer" (1913). [view this image at http://bit.ly/ps-00003] Slide 4, at 0:30:00. Stanzas from "The Snail" (1731) by William Cowper. [view this image at http://bit.ly/ps-00004] Slide 5, at 0:34:07. Stanza from "The Snail" by William Cowper (1731), with loss of indentation. [view this image at http://bit.ly/ps-00005] Slide 6, at 0:40:20. Facsimile of the original appearance of Ezra Pound's "In the Station of the Metro" (1913) in Poetry magazine. [view this image at http://bit.ly/ps-00006] Slide 7, at 0:42:26. Facsimile of the appearance of "In the Station of the Metro" in Poetry, showing the author's name. [view this image at http://bit.ly/ps-00007] Slide 8, at 0:46:48. Excerpts from "Ballad of the Tempest" (1849, by James T. Fields) and "The Dictaphone Bard" (1919, by Franklin P. Adams). [view this image at http://bit.ly/ps-00008] Slide 9, at 0:55:21. "The Voice" (1950) by Thomas Hardy, as available at http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/184537. [view this image at http://bit.ly/ps-00009] Slide 10, at 1:01:00. Here is revealed the poem whose text had been hidden: "Desert Places" (1936) by Robert Frost. [view this image at http://bit.ly/ps-00010]