The bees came out of the junipers, two small swarms the size of melons; and golden, too, like melons, they hung next to each other, at the height of a deer’s breast above the wet black compost.
“The Dragon,” by Brigit Pegeen Kelly
This is the opening sentence of Kelly’s poem, which unfurls a proliferation of images. Bees, juniper, swarms, melons, golden, deer’s breast, wet black compost.
As the sentence progresses, a new image appears, a new way of seeing the bees, and this conveys a sense of time passing. The clock ticks and the narrator looks closer and sees more. As the narrator continues to look, the speaker’s imagination is invoked, and a metaphor is made, comparing the two swarms of bees to the size of melons. Not only do we have a new image, but we learn something about the narrator who thinks of melons.
As James Wood writes in How Fiction Works, metaphor is successful in the poetic sense and the character sense if it is a “character-appropriate metaphor—the kind of metaphor that this particular character or community would produce.”
Kelly uses a semicolon in an interesting way. In a compound sentence, usually a semicolon or a conjunction connects the two or more base clauses. But here she uses both, which causes you to pause and continue as if she wants you to see the metaphor fully before you move on. (I’ve attached the entire poem below, and you’ll see in the poem that there isn’t a line break here). The metaphor extends after the semicolon, and time continues to pass by, bringing the image of golden melons hanging next to each other. Then we are given the precise height of the melons/swarms and the introduction of two new images, the deer’s breast and the wet black compost.
There’s a paradox in this sentence. It invokes time passing as more is seen, but there’s a sense of standing still because all the modifying information refers back to the bees. The accretion propels forward and, at the same time, returns to the bees. It’s a really interesting movement, one that writing, unlike other forms of art, can do well.
If you think of the page as acreage, this type of sentence takes up more space, signaling to the reader that the image is important to the story or poem.
Your turn
Open with a base clause that introduces an image. Here the subject of Kelly’s sentence is bees. Add a comma and further describe the subject.
Now add a metaphor, comparing your subject to something else. She used the domain of insects and compared it to the domain of fruits.
Add a semicolon and a conjunction, then continue your metaphor. Open with additional details about the “source,” or what your subject (target) is being compared to. Then comes your second base clause. Here it’s, “they hung next to each other.”
Add a modifying phrase that refers to this second base clause and includes two new images.
Music
Kelly uses alliteration: small/swarms/size, and with the repeated “s,” I hear the buzz of bees. I also hear the echo of the “b” with bees/breast/black. There’s great unity when a sound early in a sentence is repeated at the end, such as “bees” and “black.”
There’s assonance: melons/next/breast/wet.
The three heavy stresses at the end draw attention to the final words: WET BLACK COMpost. (In the poem, the last line introduces “dark,” which returns me to the wet black compost).
Try it!
Let me know what happens.
What else do you see?
Here’s the link to “The Dragon,” by Brigit Pegeen Kelly:
https://www.proquest.com/openview/0c327b75032934aea732e0e0f80ee235/1.pdf?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=48560
About Me
I’ve taught “Style in Fiction,” “Word for Word” and “Cultivating Your Prose” at the University of San Francisco and Stanford Continuing Studies since 2007. In each of these classes, we spend 10 to 15 weeks drenched in the beauty of sentences, reading them and writing them. It’s such a pleasure! I’ve watched my writing and my students’ writing blossom with this practice of paying close attention to the sentence.
Please visit my website to find all of my books, www.ninaschuyler.com. You’ll find my book, How to Write Stunning Sentences, and my new book, Stunning Sentences: A Creative Writing Journal.
I’d really love it if you preordered my novel, Afterword, which will be published in May 2023.
Preorder links:
https://bookshop.org/p/books/afterword-nina-schuyler/18618162?ean=9781955904704
https://smile.amazon.com/Afterword-Nina-Schuyler/dp/1955904707/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3TZ5QIYJ90EYM&keywords=afterword+nina&qid=1673155946&sprefix=afterword+nina%2Caps%2C139&sr=8-1
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Hey Nina, did you hear the interview with Salman Rushdie on the New Yorker Radio Hour? It’s so great. The more I know about him, the more I love him! (You can find it on:
www.wnyc.org
Click on “schedule” and then on whatever show you’d like to hear.)
Thank you for attaching the entire poem: talk about stunning! So moving. Turned me inside out. Oh lord, another writer to fill my cup with!