Verlyn Klinkenborg’s book, Several Short Sentences About Writing, has an unusual format. There is no Table of Contents and the sentences are arranged like a poem. The first page starts with a paragraph with no title.
“Here, in short, is what I want to tell you.
Know what each sentences says,
What it doesn’t say,
And what it implies.
Of these, the hardest is knowing what each sentence actually says.”
“Short sentences aren’t hard to make.
The difficulty is forcing yourself to keep them short.”
“You’ll make long sentences again, but they’ll be short
Sentences at heart.”
“Sentences listening for the silence around them.
Listening for their own pulse.”
Klinkenborg was born in Meeker Colorado in 1952. He is an American non-fiction author and is a member of the editorial board of The New York Times. He has a Ph.D. in English literature from Princeton University.
