183′

Exercises:

Ground rules: This week we’re going to generate paragraphs from lists or catalogues. The elements of a list will become parts of sentences, and the sentences parts of paragraphs. The structure, order and even the dramaturgy of the lists themselves will be your first concern; the transfiguration of a series of entities merely coordinated (a + b + c + d) into a sequence of sentences subordinated violently or subtly will follow.

1. Make up a number of lists of various sorts: congeries, incremental or classified in various ways. Take at least one of these about twelve elements – and, by presentation alone, see what you can do to make it build to a climax, fall away, form subgroups, etc.

2. Take yesterday’s twelve-item list and, embodying each item in a sentence, build the sequence of sentences into a paragraph. The paragraph should describe a space – interior or exterior– or situation (if your elements are not objects). If your list is a congeries, the unified category may be harder to construct; if it is a simple unfolding of one category, it may be duller to read. Your control and modulation of sentence structure, length, and pace will be as important to the shape of your paragraph as the sinews of its subordination and its conceptual coherence.

3. Take the same list, and compose totally different sentences which will compose a paragraph of narrative. You will discover that the elements may have to play various – and sometimes far-fetched – roles in your narrative line.

4. Take the same list once again and subject it to random permutations of order (as by writing the elements on slips of paper and shuffling them). Then do a totally new paragraph in the same manner as before. You can try to bury or hide the elements if you wish, or bring them to the foreground in new ways.

5. Now, freedom at last: take a sentence from 2, 3, or 4 containing your personally favorite element. Start or conclude a new paragraph with it, unshackled now from the rest of the catalogue. The paragraph can be of any sort, and go anywhere. Its beauty should be a function of its augmented freedom.

Example Lists

1. shoes, ships, sealing-wax, cabbages, kings, why the sea is boiling-hot,
whether pigs have wings

2. livers, opacities, positrons, cough-drops, unicorns, doubts, Liszts (lists)

3. darkness, damsels, deficiencies of Vitamin D, dimity, declarations, delights,
diffractions, desire for doughnuts, denim, dread, demi-tasses

4. limes, dimes, times, chimes, crimes, mimes, rhymes

5. apple, bear, beach, thumb, shape, Helen, ferry

6. apple, pear, peach, plum, grape, melon, berry
6a. winesap, macintosh, russet, delicious, granny smith, gravenstein

7. apple, pear, peach, plum, grape, felon, berry
7a. apple, pear, peach, plum, grape, Helen, berry

8. berry, grape, plum, apple, grapefruit, melon

9. lemon, orange, grapefruit; apple, quince, pear; peach, plum, cherry

10. apple: cherry, berry, pear, peach and plum

11. apple? pear, peach, plum; grape? cherry, berry

12. apple? pear; peach, but not plum; grape, however, and yet melon. Finally,
alas, berry

13. Rocks, caves, bogs, fens, lakes, dens, and shades of death,
A universe of death …

Example Texts:

1) I will give out divers schedules of my beauty. It shall be inventoried, and every particle and utensil labell’d to my will: as, item, two lips, indifferent red; item, two grey eyes, with lids to them; item one neck, one chin, and so forth.

(William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night)

2) “… animals are dividen into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed,. (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (1) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies.”

(J.L. Borges, ‘The Analytical Language of John Wilkins’)

3) …person baulks at changing a note. Everything was bought in small quantities, exactly as it was wanted day by day. Today, for instance, she made the following purchases:

One cake of Vinolia for the bathroom,

Half a dozen Relief nibs,

One pot of salmon and shrimp paste (small size),

One pan scrubber of crumpled metal gauze,

One bottle of Bisurated Magnesia tablets (small size),

One bottle of gravy browning,

One skein of ‘natural’ wool (for Dickie’s vests),

One electric light bulb,

One lettuce,

One length of striped canvas to reseat a deck chair,

One set of whalebones to repair corsets,

Two pair of lambs’ kidneys,

Half a dozen small screws,

A copy of the Church Times.

(Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart)

4) Eighty-four different kinds of birds breed in the Pine Barrens, not to mention the ones that make stopovers there, and the natives include Cooper’s hawks, alder flycatchers, brown creepers, Henslow’s sparrows, red crossbills, Baltimore orioles, green herons, black ducks, yellow-billed cuckoos, sharp-shinned hawks, great horned owls, screech owls, bobwhites, woodcocks, ruby-throated hummingbirds, white-breasted nuthatches, indigo buntings, scarlet tanagers, brown-headed cowbirds, Carolina chickadees, bluebirds, blue jays, brown thrashers, turkey vultures, meadowlarks, yellow-breasted chats, hooded warblers, prairie warblers, pine warblers, yellow warblers, chestnut-sided warblers, blue-winged warblers, black-and-white warblers, parula warblers, prothonotary warblers, red-eyed vireos, white-eyed vireos, cedar waxwings, Carolina wrens, catbirds, and robins. The most common bird in the Pine Barrens is the towhee. When a man from the National Park Service asked a state forester, “What is your biggest bird, your most dramatic bird?,” the forester answered, “I would say the bald eagle.”

(John McPhee, The Pine Barrens)

5)              

Much can they prayse the trees so straight and hy,

The sayling Pine, the Cedar proud and tall,

The vine-prop Elme, the Poplar never dry,

The builder Dake, sole king of forrests all,

The Aspine good for statues, the Cypress funerall.

The Laurell, meed of mightie Conquerours

And Poet’s sage, the Firre that weepeth still,

The willow worne of forlorne Paramours,

The Eugh obedient to the bender’s will,

The Birch for shaftes, the Sallow for the mill,

The Mirrhe sweete bleeding in the bitter wound,

The warlike Beech, the Ash for nothing ill,

The fruitfull Olive, and the Plantane round

The carver Holme, the Maple seeldom inward sound.

(Spenser, FQ I,i 8-9)

6) Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of Warre, where every man is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by the Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish and short.

(Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan)

7) Under the general name of Commodity, I rank all these advantages which our senses owe to nature. This, of course, is a benefit which is temporary and mediate, not ultimate, like its service to the soul. Yet although low, it is perfect in its kind, and is the only use of nature which all men apprehend. The misery of man appears like childish petulance, when we explore the steady and prodigal provision that has been made for his support and delight on this green ball which floats him through the heavens. What angels invented these splendid ornaments, these rich conveniences, this ocean of air above, this ocean of water beneath, this firmament of earth between? this zodiac of lights, this tent of dropping clouds, this striped coat of climates, this fourfold year? Beasts, fire, water, stones, and corn serve him. The field is at once his floor, his work-yard, his play- ground, his garden, and his bed.

(Emerson, Nature)

8) He had, beside the things before mentioned, twelve marbles, part of a jew’s harp, a piece of blue bottle-glass to look through, a spool cannon, a key that wouldn’t unlock anything, a fragment of chalk, a glass stopper of a decanter, a tin soldier, a couple of tadpoles, six fire-crackers, a kitten with only one eye, a brass doorknob, a dog collar – but no dog– the handle of a knife, four pieces of orange peel, and a dilapidated old window sash.

(Twain, Tom Sawyer)

9) There were things not to talk about in the gang: you did not talk about jail, because of Walt’s father; nor about drunken men, because there was a saloonkeeper’s son; nor about the Catholics, because the motorman’s son and one bookkeeper’s son were Catholic. Julian also was not allowed to mention the name of any doctor. These things did come up and were discussed pretty thoroughly, but usually in the absence of the boy whom the talk would embarrass. There was enough to talk about: girls; changes in boys which occurred at fourteen; parades; which would you rather have; if you had a million dollars what would you do; what were you going to be when you got big; is a horse better than a dog; what was the longest you’d ever been on a train; what was the best car; who had the biggest house; who was the dirtiest kid in school; could a policeman be arrested; were you going to college when you got big; what girl were you going to marry and how many children were you going to have; what was the most important instrument in the band; what position was most important on a baseball team; were all the Confederates dead; was the Reading better than the Pennsylvania railroad; could a blacksnake kill you….

(John O’Hara, Appointment in Samarra)

10) We came to know the curious roadside species, Hitchhiking Man, Homo pollex of science, with all its many sub-species and forms: the modest soldier, spic and span, quietly waiting, quietly conscious of khaki’s viatic appeal; the schoolboy wishing to go two blocks; the killer wishing to go two thousand miles; the mysterious, nervous, elderly gent, with brand-new suitcase and clipped moustache; a trio of optimistic Mexicans; the college student displaying the grime of vacational outdoor work as proudly as the name of the famous college arching across the front of his sweatshirt; the desperate lady whose battery has just died on her; the clean-cut, glossy-haired, shifty-eyed, white-faced young beasts in loud shirts and coats, vigorously, almost priapically thrusting out tense thumbs to tempt lone women or sadsack salesmen with fancy cravings.

(Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita)

11) Sinbad the Sailor and Tinbad the Tailor and Jinbad’ the Jailer and Whinbad the Whaler and Ninbad the Nailer and Finbad the Failer and Binbad the Bailer and Pinpad the Pailer and Minbad the Mailer and Hinbad the Hailer and Rinbad the Railer and Dinbad the Kailer and Vinbad the Quailer and Limbad the Yailer and Xinbad the Phthailer,

(James Joyce, Ulysses)

12) What of the hands? We require, promise, call, dismiss, threaten, pray, supplicate, deny, refuse, interrogate, admire, number, confess, repent, confound, blush, doubt, instruct, command, incite, encourage, swear, testify, accuse, condemn, absolve, abuse, despise, defy, despite, flatter, applaud, bless, humiliate, mock, reconcile, recommend, exalt, entertain, congratulate, complain, grieve, despair, wonder, exclaim, and what not, with a variation and multiplication to the emulation of speech.

(Montaigne, ‘Apology for Raymond Sebonde’)

13)

They fought the dogs and killed the cats,

And bit the babies in the cradles,

And ate the cheeses out of the vats,

And licked the soup from the cooks’ own ladles,

Split open the kegs of salted sprats,

Made nests inside mens’ Sunday hats,

And even spoiled the women’s chats

By drowning their speaking

With shrieking and squeaking

In fifty different sharps and flats.

(Robert Browning, ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’)

14) The Ricketts are much more actively fond of pretty things than the other families are, and have lived here longer than they have, and in obedience of these equations the fireplace wall is crusted deep with attractive pieces of paper into the intricate splendor of a wedding cake or the fan of a white peacock: calendars of snowbound and staghunting scenes pressed into bas-relief out of white pulp and glittering with a sand of red and blue and green and gold tinsel, and delicately tinted; other calendars and farm magazine covers or advertisements of doglove; the blessed fireside coziness of the poor; indian virgins watching their breasts in pools or paddling up moonlit aisles of foliage; fullblown blondes in luminous frocks leaning back in swings, or taking coca-cola through straws, or beneath evening palmleaves, accepting cigarettes from young men in white monkey- coats, happy young housewives at resplendent stoves in sunloved kitchens, husbands in tuxedos showing guests an oil furnace, old ladies leaning back in rocking chairs, their hands relaxed in their needlework, their faces bemused in lamplight, . goateed and ruddy colonels smiling over cups of coffee or receiving Four Roses whiskey from vicariously delighted negroes, slenderly drawn little girls, boys, adolescent girls, adolescent boys, and young matrons in new play frocks, rompers, two-part playsuits, school frocks, school suits, First-party dresses, first long suits, sports sweaters, house frocks, afternoon frocks, and beach slacks, dickensians at Christmas dinner, eighteenth-century gentlemen in a tavern, medievalists at Christmas dinner, country doctors watching beside sick children, three-quarter views of locomotives at full speed, young couples admiring newly acquired brown and brocade davenports: all such as these overlaid in complexes and textured with the names and numberings of days months years and phases of the moon and with words and phrases and names such as – – ’’s Shoes; – –  Furniture, Hay, Grain and Feed, Yellow Stores, Gen’1 Merchandise, Kelvinator, Compliments of, Wist ye not that I am about my Father’s Business, Mazola, Railroad Age, Maxwell House, They Satisfy, Mexico Mexico, The Pause that Refreshes, Birmingham, The Progressive Farmer, After Six, Congoleum, Farm and Fireside, Love’s Gift Divine, You Can’t Afford NOT, Soft, Lovely Hands, You Owe It to Her, You Owe It to Him, You Owe It to Them, Country Gentleman, Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me but for your children, and your children’s children, Energize, Save, At Last, Don’t Be a Stick-in-the-Mud, et cetera.

(James Agee, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men)

15)   

“Shine alone in the sunrise

toward which you lend no part!”

Shine alone, shine nakedly, shine like bronze,

that reflects neither my face nor any inner part

of my being, shine like fire, that mirrors nothing.

(Wallace Stevens, ‘Nuances on a Theme by Williams’)

16) Before I decided to write this book my twenty-five years with Gertrude Stein, I had often said that I would write, the wives of geniuses I have sat with. I have sat with so many. I have sat with wives who were not wives, of geniuses who were real geniuses. I have sat with real wives of geniuses who were not real geniuses. I have sat with wives of geniuses, of near geniuses, of would be geniuses, in short I have sat very often and very long with many wives and wives of many geniuses.

(Gertrude Stein, Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas)

17)

Thou shalt have no other gods before me. – 

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:

Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain: for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.

Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

Thou shalt not kill.

Thou shalt not commit adultery.

Thou shalt not steal.

Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor’s.

(Exodus)

.

18)                  Thus with the year

Seasons return, but not to me returns

Day, or the sweet approach of Ev’n or Morn,

Or sight of vernal bloom, or Summer’s Rose,

Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;

(Milton, Paradise Lost, III)

19) A Yeman hadde he and servants namo

At that time, for him liste ride so;

And he was clad in cote and hood of greene.

A sheef of pecok arwes, bright and keene,

Under his belt he bar ful thriftily;

Wel coude he dresse his takel yemanly:

His arwes drouped nought with fetheres lowe.

And in his hand he bar a mighty bowe.

A not-heed hadde he with a brown visage.

Of wodecraft wel coude he al the usage.

Upon his arm he bar a gay bracer,

And by his side a swerd and a bokeler,

And on that other side a gay daggere,

Harneised wel and sharp as point of spere;

A Christophre on his brest of silver sheene;

An horn he bar, the baudrik was of greene.

A forster was he soothly, as I gesse.

(Chaucer, General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales)

20) We got an old tin lantern, and a butcher knife without any handle, and a bran-new Barlow knife worth two bits in any store, and a lot of tallow candles, and a tin candlestick, and a gourd, and a tin cup, and a ratty old bed-quilt off the bed, and a reticule with needles and pins and beeswax and buttons and thread and all such truck in it, and a hatchet and some nails, and a fish-line as thick as my little finger, with some monstrous hooks on it, and a roll of buckskin, and a leather dog-collar, and a horse-shoe, and some vials of medicine that didn’t have no label on them; and just as we was leaving I found a tolerable good curry-comb, and Jim he found a ratty old fiddle-bow, and a wooden leg. The straps was broke off of it, but barring that, it was a good enough leg, though it was too long for me and not long enough for Jim, and we couldn’t find the other one, though we hunted all around.

(Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn)

21) There was a child went forth every day,

And the first object he 1 ok’d upon, that object he became,

And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day, Or for many years or stretching cycles of years.

The early lilacs became part of this child,

And grass and white and red morning-glories, and white and red clover, and the song of the phoebe-bird,

And the Third-month lambs and the sow’s pink-faint litter, and the mare’s foal and the cow’s calf,

And the noisy brook of the barnyard or by the mire of the pond-side,

And the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there, and the beautiful curious liquid,

And the water-plants with their graceful flat heads, all became part of him.

The mother at home quietly placing the dishes on the supper-table,

The mother with mild words, clean her cap and gown, a wholesome odor falling off her person and clothes as she walks by,

The father, strong, self-sufficient, manly, mean, anger’d, unjust,

The blow, the quick loud word, the tight bargain, the crafty lure,

The family usages, the language, the company, the furniture, the yearning and swelling heart,

Affection that will not be gainsay’d, the sense of what is real, the thought if after all it should prove unreal,

The doubts of day-time and the doubts of night-time, the curious whether and

how,

Whether that which appears so is so, or is it all flashes and specks?

Men and women crowding fast in the streets, if they are not flashes and specks  what are they?

The streets themselves and the facades of houses, and goods in the windows,

Vehicles, teams, the heavy-plank’d wharves, the huge crossing at the ferries,

These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes, and will always go forth every day.

(Whitman, ‘There Was A Child Went Forth’)

22)    And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying,

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.

Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.

Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.

(Gospel According to St. Matthew)

23) To be, or not to be: that is the question:

Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep–  

No more – and by a sleep to say we end

The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to! ‘Tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep–  

To sleep– perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub,

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we shave shuffled off this mortal coil

Must give us pause.

(Shakespeare, Hamlet)

24) She was squatting on the floor in front of a bowl in which she was starching some garments. She was in her white petticoat, with the sleeves of her bodice rolled up and the neck slipping off her shoulders, arms bare, neck bare, red all over and sweating so much that her little loose wisps of fair hair were sticking to her skin. Into the milky liquid she was carefully dipping bonnets, men’s shirtfronts, complete petticoats and the lace edging of women’s knickers. Then she rolled the things up and put them into a square basket after dipping her hands into a pail of water and sprinkling the unstarched parts of the shirts and knickers.

(Zola, L’Assommoir).

25) The interior of the place was papered in olive and bronze tints of imitation leather. A shining bar of counterfeit massiveness extended down the side of the room. Behind it a great mahogany-appearing sideboard reached the ceiling. Upon its shelves rested pyramids of shimmering lasses that were never disturbed. Mirrors set in the face of the sideboard multiplied them. Lemons, oranges and paper napkins, arranged with mathematical precision, sat among the glasses. Many-hued decanters of liquor perched at regular intervals on the lower shelves. A nickel-plated cash register occupied a position in the exact center of the general effect. The elementary senses of it all seemed to be opulence and geometrical accuracy.

Across the bar a smaller counter held a collection of plates upon which swarmed frayed fragments of crackers, slices of boiled ham, dishevelled bits of cheese, and pickles swimming in vinegar. An odor of grasping, begrimed hands and munching mouths pervaded.

(Stephen Crane, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets)