Spring was the season for people, women in butterfly sleeves and men with white shirts and pointy shoes; people would wander like bees, and she would be part of the hive, going from place to place with a reason, a function, an intent.
“Legionnaire,” by Cécile Barlier, A Gypsy’s Book of Revelation
Spring explodes in this sentence. It’s an elaborate affair, a burst of activity after a long cold dormant period of winter, bringing butterfly sleeves and men in white shirts and pointy shoes. People become bees and she will join the hive.
Music imbues this sentence. Do you hear it? Barlier creates wonderful rhythm through balance, the pairing of twos, with “women in butterfly sleeves” and “men with white shirts and pointy shoes.” And the latter phrase contains more balance with “white shirts and pointy shoes.”
After the semicolon, balance continues with “people would wander like bees” followed by “she would be part of the hive”; then, Barlier uses series (threes) coupled with asyndeton (the elimination of conjunctions) with “a reason, a function, an intent.”
Take a moment and read the sentence out loud. It rings throughout with the long “e,” a resounding bell from beginning to end: spring/season/people/sleeves/bees/reason. And then there is the alliteration of “s” with spring/season/sleeves and the “sh” of shirts/shoes/she.
There is also the contrast of sounds, with the harsher plosives in “white shirts and pointy shoes” and the final word with two plosives, “intent.”
Images make this sentence vivid, vibrant. To create more imagery, Barlier uses synecdoche, a part of the whole, with “spring,” as the whole, and the parts, women with butterfly sleeves and the men with white shirts and pointy shoes. For me, a keyword is the adjective “butterfly,” because it leaps off the page with originality and is in conversation with bees.
A simile summons another image, “people would wander like bees,” and the simile continues with the word “hive” and with what follows, which feels like a bee buzzing from flower to flower, “going from place to place with a reason, a function, an intent.”
Your Turn
Open with an independent clause and choose a subject that contains parts.
Add balance by writing two phrases that are parts of the subject.
Add a semicolon and write your second independent clause that includes a simile.
Add a third independent clause and continue the simile through diction. Here, Barlier used “hive.” Now add a modifying phrase that further extends the simile.
Can you go back and emphasize one vowel sound? (assonance)
Try it!
What else do you see?
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: ninaschuyler.com (including “How to Write Stunning Sentences” and “Stunning Sentences: A Creative Writing Journal).
My new novel Afterword is available now! If your book club chooses my book to read, I can Zoom in and talk to the group. If you’ve read my novel please consider posting an honest review on Amazon or Goodreads. Thank you!
Order links:
A Little Reading:
I’m thrilled that Lisa Morehouse, producer at KALW radio invited me to read a short excerpt from Afterword on the podcast New Arrivals.
Here is the link:
https://www.kalw.org/newarrivals/2023-06-29/in-her-novel-nina-schuylers-protagonist-brings-back-voice-of-her-dead-husband
This was a fun and hard exercise, thank you for an engaging prompt! Here's my attempt:
The library is a crowded respite from the summer heat, study groups in muted chatter and parents shushing eager young readers; the humid air inside is like a laundromat, and thoughts tumble at each table, ideas refreshed and newly pressed, gathered up to carry home.
The last six words resonate most with me: ‘a reason, a function, an intent.’ I want to know what they are!