Emdashes. The New Yorker between the lines

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Special report: Seattle is nice

Filed under: Personal Tagged: poetry, punctuation, travel

I might do this today, among many other things (coffee, salmon).

This just in: a swell poem by my friend Damian Fallon, who just happens to have written about my favorite subject (no, not marzipan, Donald Antrim, or the still-nonexistent Hipster Express, which would run 24/7 from Bedford to Smith to 7th Ave. to Long Island City to Dumbo to Astoria to [fill in the blanks], not necessarily in that order; DJ changes nightly).

—

Merely a line,
a clip of an hypotenuse,
a snippet of the horizon.
A fallen l,
a tired I,
dash, emdash—
for being the width of m;
a symbol to indicate a break
in thought or sentence structure.
Or used to mark
absence, what is there
when something is not
there, as in "G—dammit,"
implying that God is there
when God isn't there at all.
Or to symbolize time passing,
to stand in for your life,
the year of your birth holding
it out like a plank.
How it waits for you,
offering its hand,
knowing
it will be complete—

So tell me, why do I live in New York again?

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Who we?

Emdashes, founded December 2004, is a place where keen and dedicated readers of The New Yorker, past and present, can find related news and commentary: about people, subjects, and ideas within the magazine, and events and conversations outside its pages. Learn more about us and our contributors.

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We welcome tips, questions, and comments about The New Yorker past and present, plus related events, links, typeface sightings, &c. To contact the magazine or send a submission, click here.

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This site is neither owned nor operated by The New Yorker magazine or Condé Nast Publications.

A few clips

Report: Learning to read with comic books edited by Françoise Mouly (for Print)
Interview: Designer Eleanor Grosch (for Print)
Review: Charles Addams: A Cartoonist's Life by Linda H. Davis (for Newsday)
Review: The King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game by Paul Hoffman (for Newsday)
Review: Does The New Republic's recent redesign mean a change of tune? (for Print)
Proposal: A more attractive MetroCard (for A Brief Message)
Interview: James Surowiecki on what's next for the wisdom of crowds (for Assignment Zero)
Report: Eustace Tilley spruces up for The New Yorker's website redesign (for Print)
Feature: Muslim immigration iconography in the Netherlands (for Print)
Review: books about various New Yorker cartoonists by Liza Donnelly and Iain Topliss (for Newsday)
Profile: screenwriter and novelist Joe Keenan (for Newsday)
Review: The Complete New Yorker (for Print)

More clips.

Tell me more

They say that dashes “are particularly useful in a sentence that is long and complex.” Emdashes—like em dashes—emphasizes what’s between: in particular, between the lines, covers, and issues of a magazine close to my heart.

Primary sources

The New Yorker
Events listed by the magazine
Web resources: New Yorker writers and artists
Books, Organizations, &c.

Edited by Martin Schneider, designed by Pretty, and illustrated by Inkleaf. Additional drawings by Carolita Johnson. Kissable pencil girl by Jennifer Hadley, based on a 1943 Dorothy Gray ad.

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