Oct
1

The two Communists were at a loss for the words they would have needed to demand their own possessions back from these Germans to whom they had once been related.
—Jenny Erpenbeck, from Visitation

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
The awkwardness of the language and the phrasing mimics the awkwardness of the situation. Relatives are reduced to being not only "Communists" or "Germans" but "the two Communists" and "these Germans," which is funny, suggests a permanent rift in the family, and manages to express both points of view simultaneously. This is war—a fight over a few pieces of furniture that will never be resolved.
—Paul Rusconi is working on a novel called A Motion to Extend Time