Summer came, clanging days of glaring sunshine in the seaside town where I live, the gulls screaming in the early dawn, a glittering agitation everywhere, the water a vista of smashed light.
“Aftermath,” by Rachel Cusk, Coventry
Usually, summer is a time of buoyancy with stretches of unstructured, formlessness, open to whatever might come along. A party, a picnic, a parade, with time allowed to unfold and stretch out like a lazy cat.
But in Cusk’s sentence, summer is the opposite. Using metaphors, Cusk compares summer days to something clanging, like a broken or loud, irritating machine. Sunshine glares and the gulls scream, invoking an angry human. We come to a metaphor and an oxymoron, with “glittering agitation.” Glittering, like summer, is usually associated with beauty or something pleasant—a glittering necklace, glittering chandeliers; but in this sentence, it bursts out of its foregone conclusion by modifying agitation, which is usually unpleasant. The sentence ends with the lovely phrase, one that I’ll never forget, “the water a vista of smashed light.” Light is compared to something broken into shards.
The sentence exists in the envelope of someone’s consciousness. It suggests a compelling way to convey your character’s feelings without explicitly stating them. The setting is filtered through your protagonist’s point of view, and whatever your character’s mood, the landscape is altered by it. Though it’s summer with its loosening and opening, the narrator in this sentence is not happy.
The Making
This is a cumulative, right-branching sentence, which opens with a base clause. Here, the base clause is “summer came.”
Everything that comes after it modifies summer.
1) Add a modifying phrase or clause and use two adjectives that are not usually associated with your selected nouns. Remember, think of the world as different domains. Cusk used “clanging days” and “glaring sunshine.”
2) Add another modifying phrase or clause that refers back to your base clause. This time use a verb that gives human characteristics to a nonhuman noun (personification)—"gulls screaming.”
3) Now here comes the oxymoron. Add another modifying phrase or clause and combine an adjective and noun that are not usually found together. One way to approach this is to think of the world in dualities. In one column write down adjectives that are usually associated with the negative aspect of the world (terrible, awful, crummy, anxious… ) and now write a column of nouns that are positive. Combine one of the words from the negative column with the positive column. (or vice versa—make a list of positive adjectives and negative nouns).
4) Add one more modifying phrase that includes a metaphor. Use an adjective that is not normally used with the selected noun. You might use the technique suggested in #3. Here, Cusk wrote “smashed light.”
Try it!
What did you discover?
What else do you see or like about this sentence?
Using oxymorons is a favorite trick of mine, especially since I tend to write in a very sarcastic/cynical voice. Horrific celebration and vituperous praise jumped into my head as I was writing this comment.
I can relate to this- I’ve had some shattered summers. I love the visual and sounds together.