Great Sentences—The Poetry Project, part 1

by Melissa Corliss DeLorenzo

Photo by Kim Coetzee

I’ve been thinking about the idea of poetry—its purpose and appeal—its necessity. The other day, I read one cynical and disheartening blog post about the death of poetry; that the current voice of poetry was silence. I don’t believe that to be true—I speak to wonderful poets every month whose work is vibrantly alive in the world.

In spending some time with some poetry books, I realize that the wall between poetry and prose —at least as far as my practice and reading extends—is, in many ways, no more than a thin veil. As with prose, it is the tussle and scramble between two words: the one you used and the one you didn’t think of. It is a different view that’s always been there, the angle of which the writer uncovers—words that enlarge meaning or provide hidden or alternative meanings, each word adding to the building of momentum. It is imagery—binding and unraveling. It is the practice of holding up the ordinary and illuminating it—a thing to be experienced in your body—a sharp blow or a barely-felt flutter.

So, I’ve been on the hunt for some great sentences.

In Tender Hooks by Beth Fennelly, I found one of those moments when a sentence precisely captures experience with metaphor you had not though of yourself, but once you read it, you wonder how you could not have thought of it yourself. In “Latching On, Falling Off,” she describes breastfeeding a newborn as, It hurts like when an angry sister plaits your hair. I reacted to that apt description viscerally.

In “I Need to Be More French. Or Japanese,” I was taken with her use of spacing to create a certain rhythm within a single sentence:
I hereby pledge to wear more gray, less yellow
of the beaks of baby mockingbirds,
that huge yellow yawping open on wobbly necks,
trusting something yummy will be dropped inside,
soon.

Nikki Giovanni’s work is trickier—for me, at least. In My House, she dismisses, for the most part, the use of most forms of punctuation. It does create its own rhythm, as much as the use of punctuation does. But how to locate a sentence? Perhaps it’s a matter of perspective. I noticed passages removed from the larger context of the poem which are complete forms of thought in and of themselves and universal in their meaning—universally identifiable and relatable.
From “Legacies”:
and neither of them ever
said what they meant
and i guess nobody ever does

And from “Mothers”:
the last time i was home
to see my mother we kissed
exchanges pleasantries
and unpleasantries pulled a warm
comforting silence around
us and read separate books

I intended to write solely about poetry this week, but at the Friends of the Library Book Sale the other night, I happened upon The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif and the very first sentence put me in mind of poetry although it is a novel. “—and there, on the table under her bedroom window, lies the voice that set her dreaming again.” It is a dropping in right into the story in progress. I mean, all stories have a beginning, but there is beginning before beginning. I love how the structure of the sentence itself is a literal dropping in, and that feels poetic to me, not only the words but the structure itself. Although some have described prose as explicitly expository; whereas with poetry every reader gets their own interpretation, I disagree. Reader perception happens with all work and here, I think, is a great sentence to emphasize that.

Lastly, I’ve been reading poetry to my children for National Poetry Month. The other morning, I read a poem by Lillian Moore called “Until I Saw the Sea.” My son was especially taken with the final stanza:
Nor
did I know before,
a sea breathes in and out
upon a shore.

He responded, “Oh yeah! The ocean does do that!” He inhaled, “It comes forward.” He exhaled, “And it goes back!”

How have you been celebrating National Poetry Month?

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