Propane slept in the tank and propane leaked while I slept, blew the camper door off and split the tin walls where they met like shy strangers kissing, blew the camper door like a safe and I sprang from sleep into my new life on my feet in front of a befuddled crowd, my new life on fire, waking to whoosh and tourists' dull teenagers staring at my bent form trotting noisily in the campground with flames living on my calves and flames gathering and glittering on my shoulders (Cool, the teens think secretly), smoke like nausea in my stomach and me brimming with Catholic guilt, thinking, Now I've done it, and then thinking, Done what? What have I done?
“Burn Man on A Texas Porch,” by Mark Anthony Jarman, 19 Knives
Jarman’s sentence sweeps you up and whisks you along, out of the camper and the destruction, past the tourists’ dull teens, the fire at your heels and shoulders. It’s all happening in one sentence, one unfurling motion to mimic the urgency of escaping the flames. Using punctuation such as a period or semicolon would slow everything down, undercutting the threat of being burned to a crisp.
We are in the realm of syntactic symbolism in which syntax becomes a simulation of the content. The other fascinating thing about this sentence is the three subjects, the propane, the narrator, a quick dip to the teens, then back to the narrator’s deep subjectivity.
At first glance, a long sentence can be intimidating, but if you locate the independent clauses—those clauses that can stand alone—you can see the structure. There are three primary base clauses:
1. Propane slept in the tank
2. Propane leaked while I slept
3. I sprang from sleep
First, Jarman pulls you in tight to the point of view of propane by using personification, giving it immense destructive agency. Two of the three independent clauses are devoted to the propane. Jarman grows the second propane-focused clause through a number of techniques: a subordinate clause, “while I slept,” and a series of verbs coupled with two similes and anaphora, the repetition of a word(s) at the beginning of phrases or clauses:
--blew the camper door off
--split the tin walls where they met like shy strangers kissing
--blew the camper door like a safe
Most of the growth of the overall sentence happens in the third base clause, which moves to the narrator’s point of view, with a string of prepositional phrases (I’ve bolded the prepositions), “I sprang from sleep into my new life on my feet in front of a befuddled crowd.” Do you hear the alliteration? Sprang/sleep? And the assonance of the long “e” of sleep/feet?
The third clause continues to grow by adding cascading modifiers. Here, the sentence really begins to sing, and we’re reminded how a long sentence can hold so much rhythm and music: alliteration, waking/whoosh, tourists/teenagers/trotting; gathering/glittering; anaphora: “flames living on my calves and flames gathering and glittering on my shoulders”; and simile, “smoke like nausea.”
To further dissect it, I’ll start with the third independent clause and show you the modifiers:
I sprang from sleep into my new life on my feet in front of a befuddled crowd,
--my new life on fire
--waking to whoosh (and)
--tourists’ dull teenagers staring at my bent form
--trotting noisily in the campground (refers to the bent form)
--with flames living on my calves (and)
--flames gathering and glittering on my shoulders
--smoke like nausea in my stomach (and)
--me brimming with Catholic guilt, thinking, Now I’ve done it, (and)
--then thinking, Done what? What have I done?
Jarman includes a tiny parenthetical, shifting briefly to the teen’s point of view: “(Cool, the teens think secretly).”
At the end of the sentence, Jarman invokes epistrophe with the repetition of “done” and anadiplosis: “Now I’ve done it, and then thinking, Done what? What have I done?”
Your Turn:
If you’ve never written a sentence like this, please try it. Yes, it’s a challenge, and it’ll expand your sense of what you can do with a sentence and you might be delighted and astonished by what you create.
The subject of your first two independent clauses is an object that you personify, as Jarman did with propane. Write a short first independent clause.
Now add “and” and write your second independent clause, repeating your subject. Add three verbs that further animate your inanimate subject (as Jarman did with blew/split/blew). Can you use anaphora and repeat one of your verbs? Can you add two similes?
Add “and” and here comes your third independent clause, shifting to a different subject. Is there diction that you can use from this clause to repeat, as Jarman did with “my new life”?
Add six, seven, eight modifiers.
Go back and add a short parenthetical to introduce another point of view.
Go back and add alliteration, assonance, anaphora and epistrophe and, finally, anadiplosis.
Whew! How did it go?
I’d love to see what you made!
This sentence was sent to me by a subscriber. If you find a sentence that you love or fascinates you, please send it to me!
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. 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: ninaschuyler.com (including “How to Write Stunning Sentences” and “Stunning Sentences: A Creative Writing Journal).
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Yes, super challenging but made (slightly) easier by the break down steps (thank you!!). Here's an attempt - didn't get all the techniques in there yet....a start:
A peach blushed under the sun yielded to my touch, fuzzed flesh along my tongue, slipped its skin beneath my teeth as if shimmying from an unzipped skirt, gushed against my throat like a pressure suddenly released and I felt a sudden pang of sorrow, a sharp pain in the chest, a carved and hollowed hurt, I felt regret, I felt nostalgic for all the love created and consumed to feed the hunger in my mind, my mind's eye blinkered, busted, bewitched by need and fruitful fancy, (he hadn't loved her, never that way), a spell of silent wishing to satiate a heart gone swollen, gone sour, a disconnected connection fermented to going going gone.
Wow, quite a challenge! I didn't even get close to including all of the parts in the prompt (there's so many!), but this was so interesting to try. I don't know the full story behind this sentence, but I really want to know now... Thanks Nina!!
The letter hid in the bookshelf and snuck its way into the box, slipped out at the unpacking and whispered its secrets like a snake’s rattle, slipped out like a long-held breath and she whirled into a knowing on this third day of her orphaning, a knowing so long delayed, the thin page shaking in her hand and her mother’s lost voice shimmering, crisp and even, with only the tap of the envelope flitting to the tile floor beside her knees and the caustic clock ticking in the shocked silence (turn the music on, dear, mom would say) and she bent her body over the box, gasping and grateful: You knew, knew me. You knew.