Oct
20
20
His crossed arms weighting down his eyes, he fell asleep to the sound of someone running lightly down the carpeted interior stairs, some clean-shaven and showered clerk running down into the day.
—Gina Berriault, from “Nights in the Gardens of Spain”
About
Poets think in lines, prose writers in sentences; the best of both work from sound to sense, with an ear for the music in their compositions. S for Sentence celebrates lyricism in prose, the play and craft at work in the artful sentence. We post a sentence a month along with comments by a guest writer on the craft that shapes it, on what makes it great. In one or two sentences.—Pearl Abraham, Editor
This symphony of a sentence is the final one of a favorite story: An elderly, disappointed guitarist makes love, metaphorically, to the very idea of art, listening, in a night's long vigil, to one record. The whisper of this sentence's sibilance! The bedrock assertion of those 'd's! The symmetric shush of that showered clerk! This assertion of the outside world running down into the day leaves our guitarist outside time. By the story's logic, time is love and yet this last sentence - its triumph! - manages to unyoke both from art.
—Edie Meidav is the author of Kingdom of the Young and Lola, California.
—Edie Meidav is the author of Kingdom of the Young and Lola, California.