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.