From: Hal Fulton <hal9000@...>
Date: 2005-07-19T09:02:42+09:00
Subject: Re: [OT] "poetry" mode

David A. Black wrote:
> Hi --
> 
> On Tue, 19 Jul 2005, Ara.T.Howard wrote:
> 
>> which just reads quite nicely without parens and last, but not least, 
>> those of
>> us who've detest any extra chars in code like '$', ';', and even 
>> parens. they
>> don't call it 'poetry' mode for nothing ;-)
> 
> 
> Actually, they do :-)  This came up on IRC recently, and I still don't
> know the answer: why is the non-use of parentheses referred to as
> "poetry mode", when plenty of poems contain parentheses?  It's never
> made any sense to me.

I believe it's a reference to the tendency of modern poetry
to omit punctuation in general, particularly the imitators
of E. E. Cummings. (And yes, he frequently did use punctuation,
as well as capital letters.)


Hal