Curating an Image

Plainsong by Kent Haruf

Across the way they were still asleep, together in the same bed under the north windows, cuddled up, although it was still early fall and not yet cold.

Plainsong by Kent Haruf

Photo by Maria Luísa Queiroz on Unsplash

The two brothers, Bobby and Ike, are asleep on the old sleeping porch with the “uncurtained windows on three sides.” Poets are intimately familiar with the powerful paradox of imagery, how an image ushers in specificity and also generates associations that are not explicitly on the page.

Those associations can proliferate wildly, streaming off in many different directions. As a writer, you can let the image radiate all that unstated gorgeousness or you can rein it in, which is what Haruf does in this sentence.

After a short adverbial phase, “Across the way,” the base clause follows: “they were still asleep.” Haruf adds more details, so we see where, exactly, they are sleeping, modifying the base clause with short prepositional phrases, “in the same bed,” and “under the north windows.”

Now comes the image that describes how they are sleeping: “cuddled up.” Before the associations propagate, Haruf adds the subordinate clause: “although it was still early fall and not yet cold.” There are other ways of controlling the possible interpretations of an image, but Haruf’s way is very efficient.

“Although” is a concessive conjunction. Concessive clauses highlight a situation where something happens despite a potential barrier or opposing circumstance. (Other concessive conjunctions: even if, even though, though, in spite of, despite).

In this case, even though the expected conditions for cuddling don’t exist—i.e., it isn’t cold—the brothers are cuddling. In one quick clause, Haruf eliminates the interpretation that they are trying to stay warm. So it seems likely (since we soon learn they are ages nine and ten) the brothers are providing each other with emotional comfort and support. What a powerful and subtle way to introduce tension on the page. Moreover, this image appears on the first page. Care is woven throughout the novel, and this image of cuddling brothers foregrounds this emotional throughline.

Haruf weaves in eloquence through parallelism, though it’s not obvious because he uses ellipsis, the elimination of words that are easily implied:

1. it was still early fall (and)

2. (it was) not yet cold.

This makes the eloquence quieter, a technique Haruf uses throughout the novel, opening the door to other registers of language, especially the voices of farmers. Brilliantly, the syntax matches the title of the book. Plainsong: a simple, unadorned melody. The language comes together creating a unique, polyvocal symphony.

Your Turn

Open with a base clause, your subject and verb.

Add two prepositional phrases that give more description to something in the base clause.

Add a concrete image that further elaborates on the base clause.

Now use “although” or one of the other concessive conjunctions and eliminate one possible interpretation of the image.

Try it!

How did it go?

Please send me sentences that fill you with awe or pleasure or delight.

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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.

My short story collection, In this Ravishing World, won the W.S. Porter Prize and the Prism Prize for Climate Literature and was published in July 2024. My award-winning novel, Afterword, was published in May 2023. My novel, The Translator, was a finalist for the William Saroyan International Writing Prize, and The Painting, a finalist for the Northern California Book Award. My nonfiction books, How to Write Stunning Sentences and Stunning Sentences: A Creative Writing Journal, are bestsellers. Second editions are coming in January 2026. My short stories have appeared in Zyzzyva, Chicago Quarterly Review, Fugue, Nashville Review, Your Impossible Voice, and many other publications. I teach creative writing at Stanford Continuing Studies. Please visit my website: www.ninaschuyler.com

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