Ever read a sentence that’s so good, you just have to look up from the page to let it sink in? Grant offers one from Ezra Pound: “The book should be a ball of light in one’s hands.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Most Interesting Sentences”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette. I was reading a magazine article recently on libido, which included this line.
And one of the world’s masters of rat lust is Jim Faus, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Concordia University in Montreal, who wears hoop earrings and used to sing in a punk band called Mold.
And Grant, I was reminded of the fact that every once in a while there’s a sentence that I come across in an article, and I just have to look up because it’s so arresting.
So you’re reading and you’re caught by it.
And you look up and look around you and see if anybody else witnessed this miraculous event.
But it was just between you and the page.
Yes, exactly.
Or it’s such a great word picture or just this arresting thought.
And I’m reminded of the fact that there’s a guy on Twitter, Sam Anderson.
He’s a writer for The New York Times.
And every day he posts the best sentence that he’s read in the last 24 hours.
And I have a really good time reading this because you come across tweets like this one from Ann Carson where she says, “Someone has put cries of birds on the air like jewels.”
That’s nice.
I don’t know what it was about, but it’s nice.
I have no idea either, but they’re just beautiful.
I like that.
And I think it’s a great question to ask yourself.
What is the best sentence I’ve read in the last 24 hours?
I can’t answer that one, but I do keep a commonplace book of sorts.
This is where when you find something interesting, you mark it down.
And I’m coming up on thousands of lines that I’ve been collecting over the last 15 years or so and passing from program to program to computer to computer.
And one of the lines that’s in there is this line from Ezra Pound that I love a lot.
The book should be a ball of light in one’s hand.
It’s beautiful.
It suggests the brilliance of the writer coming through and penetrating your brain.
Yeah, yeah. I would look up from that.
Like a space ray coming from the book.
Well, what’s the best sentence that you’ve read in the last 24 hours?
Let us know about it.
Send it to words@waywordradio.org or call us 877-929-9673.
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