Artful Sentences

If you care even the least whit about how you write, this is a class for you. If you are interested in exercising your sentence-writing muscles, this is a class for you. We will certainly examine the rules and principles of English composition, including grammar, punctuation, word usage, sentence construction, and strategies for proofreading and revision. But such examinations are sometimes dull, stuffy, self-righteous, and boring. Ours will attempt a more stylish exploration of written style, like trying on hats in a haberdashery, or hounding the hobgoblins from our foolish consistencies, or swinging outward on a swaggering buccaneer’s highest rope. Will it be dangerous? Of course! An education should be.

At its core, this is a class about sentences: how they work, where they come from, what they do. We will explore everything about sentences we can possibly imagine. We will write short, bold sentences. We will write long sentences, sentences that unfold slowly, adding detail after detail until somewhere in the heart of them all a kind of luminous sense of meaning emerges, a transportation into the very essence of something that matters. Hopefully, everyone who takes this class will come out of it confident and experienced at writing a wide range of sentences: simple, complex, pointed, lyrical, playful, clear, challenging, sexy, honest, intellectual, delicious, precise. Be prepared to train like a runner for a marathon, like a gymnast for a vault, like a curler for throwing a good rock. Sentences matter. I hope you will join us and discover what pleasures there are in writing, imagining, creating, and exploring sentences.