Missing the Mark: The Point Not Apparent
by Richard Oxman

-A semicolon can be used to separate what is-independent. But there's so much to consider with the punctuation; in Greek and Church Slavonic it indicates a question, similar to a Latin question mark.- — My Lutheran Linguistic Professor Neighbor

-When I went to Weequahic High School, Jewish neighborhoods –nationally– tended to have short life spans. Kind of like Palestinians do today.- — An old high school sweetheart

Semicolons, semicitizens, semicomrades, semievergreen, semiliterate.

Me and Stephen Crane. We both came from Newark, New Jersey. Jerry Lewis too.

But the goofy guy, France's favorite clown, Evergreen Stephen, and I all hung out in different parts of the Weequahic section of The Flower of the Garden State.

Philip Roth, also growing up in the south ward (and born in the same Beth Israel Hospital room as me), spent mucho tiempo in the Frederick Law Olmsted park which we all shared in common.

At different times, in different ways.

Before the tanks arrived in '67 in and around the oldest public golf course in the U.S. Long before I-78 took over, of course.

Of course, I'm being intentionally oblique. Once again, moreso than Emily Dickinson.

It's especially important to do so in this particular article. Perhaps you'll understand if you take a look at Crane's Black Riders III, the inspiration for this piece:

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, -Is it good, friend?-
-It is bitter–bitter,- he answered;
-But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart.-

Look at why the semicolon is so effective at the end of the seventh line.

Leading up to that juncture, the narration of Crane's fantastic event has been conventional (like the rubberized jogging path around the 80-acre lake in Weequahic Park). Seriously, incident, question and answer do follow one after the other-in traditional fashion. With the arrival of the semicolon, however, Stephen implies that he is creating his own sentence out of the creature's speech. In doing so, he suggests that he is –perhaps– identifying with the answer, that it is significantly meaningful for him. Odd, both.

Nonetheless, the poet has little in common with the creature; certainly not Jewish blood.

Let's not hear it for-Tradition; let’s not sing that popular song. Let The Singular rule. And then we'll see.

Richard Oxman, info@parisgraves.com, thinks Emily Dickinson is one of the greatest female poets who ever lived, but-he doesn't believe that any of the activists he's marched with understand her; their occasional talk about her greatness notwithstanding. The most updated versions of his articles are posted at www.oxtogrind.org -where he often rants about the delusion of left solidarity fact/potential. And semi-consciousness.