Passion is in the Syntax

Further to the post on pauses, exhibit A:

Lineation in poetry is of course a form of punctuation. Punctuation is silence—laden, rhythmic silence—as in Mozart’s purported remark (which I cannot find in any of my Mozart books) that the most important part of music is “no music.” The caesura for us in English is an immensely abbreviated version of what the Selah was to the psalmist: Pause here. Weigh this. (Sometimes the caesura isn’t all that brief: most readers of English poetry know the percussive fountain-jets of silence separating the phrases in John Webster’s “Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle; she died young.”) I remember that when I first read Yeats’s saying that passion is in the syntax, I didn’t understand what he meant, but I think I do get it now, and would add that punctuation too is one of the most emotional instruments poets have (and that not all punctuation has been invented yet, I am sure).

- Gjertrud Schnackenberg, interviewed on her book Heavenly Questions