Semicolons

I was wondering the same thing about copyediting poems as Chi. I'm interested to see the response to her question. Since I have to think of another question, I'll use this to bring up semicolons. Pat passed out the "Punctuation Pattern Sheet," about clauses. If a semicolon only goes between two independent clauses, why not just use a period? (Instead of, "John washed his car; he waxed it, too." Couldn't one also write, "John washed his car. He waxed it, too.")

Copyediting poems

For some reason it was extremely difficult for me to copyedit the poem handed out in class. I am pretty sure the writer was not a native speaker of English. But even if he was, and even if the poem had made more sense, I think I still would have had a hard time copyediting the poem. I feel that each word and punctuation mark (or lack thereof) is very sensitive in a poem. I have been asked to translate Korean poems into English and I just can't seem to do it because the translation will never carry the exact feeling/meaning as the original poem. I guess that's the same way I feel about copyediting a poem. Although the poem handed out in class was an unusual case, I feel reluctant to alter any part of a poem because even an incorrect spelling might be intentional. But I guess we can always query the writer. I was wondering though, if we were working for a journal like Manoa, are there certain copyeditors who are assigned to copyediting certain genres or are all copyeditors expected to copyedit all the works to be published?

Poetry

I'm the editor for "Seeds + Esssse." It's a public school-based poetry journal for students from K-12 (and perhaps even college.)

My problem: how should I edit pidgin? I have my own ideas of how to spell in pidgin--should I leave the words the way the poet wrote them, or should I create a kind of pidgin dictionary, specifically for the journal?