…sonnets. My personal philosophy with punctuating poetry, in general is: “The more the merrier.” In prose, such punctuation would be distracting, although it is also useful in prose, and for the same reason; that being performance. Extra punctuation can be very helpful to the performer–even in prose wherein such punctuation would be distracting if one were reading to oneself. It is particularly useful in poetry. I think of proper punctuation more as musical notation: breath marks for a woodwind player, or a vocalist, for example. So wherever I have a clause, even a short one, which is out of order or parenthetical, or augmentative, I use commas or even dashes if it helps make grammatical sense of a long sentence–or even a short one.

My sweetheart grew up reading sonnets with her grandfather, and when she reads them out loud, I notice that she has a finely cultivated sense of how they should be read. It is so well cultivated that it seems second nature, or natural, or instinctive; and which seems to be helped along by proper–even excessive–punctuation.

So, short story long: that is the reason you’ll see what one might call over punctuation in these offerings I daily present.