The Quiet World by Jeffrey McDaniel | Poetry Foundation

Isn’t that the saddest thing in the world, Ma? A comma forced to be a period? “Hello,” he says, without turning his

Two languages cancel each other out, suggests Barthes, beckoning a third. Sometimes our words are few and far between, or simply ghosted.

Emily Dickinson’s beautiful poem is called Wild Nights – Wild Nights!, and combines two elements of which I am inordinately fond: punctuation, and the theme of finding, at long last, a soul mate.