When I first began writing, I felt that writing should go on,
I still do feel that it should go on but when I first began
writing I was completely possessed by the necessity that writing
should go on and on and if writing should go on what had colons
and commas to do with it, what had periods to do with it what
had small letters and capitals to do with it to do with writing
going on which was at that time the most profound need I had in
connection with writing. What had colons and semi-colons to do
with it what had commas to do with it what had periods to do with
it.
What had periods to do with it. Inevitably no matter how completely
I had to have writing go on, physically one had to again and again
stop sometime and if one had to again and again stop sometime and
if one had to again and again stop some time then periods had to
exist. Beside I had always like the look of periods and I liked
what they did. Stopping sometime did not really keep one from
going on, it was nothing that interfered, it was only something that
happened, and as it happened as a perfectly natural happening, I
did not believe in periods and I used them. I really never stopped
using them.
Beside that periods might later come to have a life of their own to
commence breaking up things in arbitrary ways, that has happened
lately with me in a poem I have written called Winning His Way, later
I will read you a little of it. By the time I had written this poem
about three years ago periods had come to have for me completely a
life of their own. They could begin to act as they thought best and
one might interrupt one’s writing with them that is not really
interrupt one’s writing with them but one could come to stop arbitrarily
stop at times in one’s writing and so they could be used and you
could use them Periods could come to exist in this way and they could
come in this way to have a life of their own. They did not serve you in
any servile way as commas and colons and semi-colons do. Yes you do
feel what I mean.
Periods have a life of their own a necessity of their own a feeling
of their own a time of their own. And that feeling that life that
necessity that time can express itself in an infinite variety that
is the reason that I have always remained true to periods so much
so that as I say recently I have felt that one could need them more
than one had ever needed them.