A Single Perfect Sentence: Writers Resist
It could be a great novel,Or, perhaps, a novella, a short story, an essay, a poem,
A single perfect sentence might do.
A sentence that sings that captures her meaning,
A sentence once heard that inspires a person.
Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, 1852
A sentence containing utopia,
A sentence expressing a vision, a future,
A sentence you see yourself in.
A solar sentence, a female sentence, a sentient sentence,
A sentence with no extinct animals.
Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind, 1936
It might be a smooth or a tricksy sentence.
It could be the sentence that finds your lost daughter.
The sentence that winds through the woods.
The sentence that writes a writer her way,
The sentence she wears like a hood.
Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, 1960
This sentence goes on and on.
This sentence comes to an end.
This sentence converses, says much in small spaces,
Sentenced to having the same conversation.
You read this sentence again and again.
Toni Morrison's Beloved, 1987
Sentences follow this sentence.
Sentences snake round the truth.
Everyone owns her own sentence, she who is sentences says.
You have a sentence inside of you.
You want your sentence to end.
Marilynne Robinson's Gilead, 2004
Side by side, sentences sliding,
Sentences writing our world,
Sentences making our sense of it,
Until, perhaps, a poem, an essay, a short story, a novella,
The Great American Novel is born.
Others will ask a writer whether she is writing the "Great American Novel," but writers know we might be content with just one good sentence. With thanks to the Wikipedia entry on the Great American Novel.
I found this... Engaging.
ReplyDeleteAre all those novels considered maybe the Great American Novel?
Maybe I should read Gilead?
Yes, they are! I did add Gilead to my to-read list.
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