“poems are like icebergs: you see its bigness on the surface but once you get to know how it looks beneath the surface, you’ll realize how big of a monument nature’s work actually is.” – dimitrireyespoet.com
In poetry, the little things are the most important because as poets we have the poetic freedom to make rules and break them all the time. With doing so, I sometimes see students focus so greatly on several aspects that some of them get left behind— one of them being the use of capitalization. There are several ways one can use capitalization to their advantage in a poem and I’d like to share with you WHEN and HOW to Use Capitalization in Your Poetry.
1. Capitalization with Titles
When considering titles, you can choose to title your work in one of several ways:
Classic: Assessment of the Urban Dollar
Every first letter of the word is capitalized and you follow the regular format of titling something.
First Letter: Assessment of the urban dollar
Something that I’ve been seeing more periodically, and that’s the first letter being capitalized where the rest of them aren’t. If I can nickname this anything, I’d probably call it the “Sentence Title” since it follows those grammar rules. This works especially well if you plan on having your title sound like it’s the first line of the poem and that’s probably when I’d encourage this. Otherwise it can look like an accident. Use your discretion.
No Capitalization: assessment of the urban dollar
This means that your entire title exists sans capitalization. This works very well with poets who don’t tend to capitalize in their poems. It shows consistency but on an interpretive level, the speaker isn’t holding the title as any more important than the poem. The fact that capitalizations call attention and importance to themselves, a poem without capitalization gives a tone of emotional/ narrative equality.
2. Capitalization with Line Breaks
It’s important to pay attention to your capitalization especially when you’re going line to line because you have three choices: you can choose to capitalize the first letter of every line which is something a word document, google document, or other platform does, you can follow the grammatical structure of a sentence, or you can decide to not capitalize at all.
First Letter of Every Line:
Paper currency.
The dollar green ink on the
Dollar green paper
That makes others
Without them green with envy.
You’ll see this structure replicated by many poets you’ll read before the new millennium. In more recent contemporary works, poets have decided to follow the grammatical structure of a sentence, even if they have a line break mid sentence.
Following Sentence Structure:
Paper currency.
The dollar green ink on the
dollar green paper
that makes others
without them green
with envy.
No Capitalization:
paper currency.
the dollar green ink on the
dollar green paper
that makes others
without them green
with envy.
3. Capitalization with Specific Words or Phrases
This is more exploratory, where certain words are purposefully capitalized. They can highlight a certain theme for metaphorical effect or even highlight a subject that continues to recycle itself through your work. Capitalizing a certain word or phrase can give this word or phrase in the poem an amplified source of power where attention is automatically drawn to it. In the example using my poem, “Assessment of the Urban Dollar” we see how paying attention to the color green plays up the ideas of ink, money, and the idiom green with envy.
paper currency.
The dollar Green ink on the
dollar Green paper
that makes others
without them Green with envy.
Paying attention to capitalization cues can help draw your reader in closer where they’ll be trying to connect all of the other tidbits of your poem’s information in order to conceptually push your poem further. Once I was told that poems are like icebergs: you see its bigness on the surface but once you get to know how it looks beneath the surface, you’ll realize how big of a monument nature’s work actually is.
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