Soaked by sentences on a rainy Sunday morning
Trying not to wake the slumberous body beside me, I reach over and quietly pick up my recently purchased copy of Charlotte Wood’s [1]A fiercely eco-feminist friend and voracious reader often recommends books she has recently read she thinks I might like. For weeks Renee kept saying, “Oh Liz, you have to read The luminous … Continue reading The Luminous Solution: Creativity, Resilience and the Inner Life. “Other people’s creative lives have always fascinated me”, writes Wood and her first sentence draws me in. Like Wood, my bookshelf is full of writers’ writing about their writing—Virginia Woolf A Writer’s Diary, Natalie Goldberg Writing Down the Bones, Ursula K. Le Guin Steering the Craft, Margaret Atwood On Writers and Writing (previously called Negotiating with the Dead), Anne Lamont Bird by Bird—to name a a few. A quick glance at these kind, wise and loving sentinels watching over me as I write is sometimes all I need to light the lamp in my spine. With a slight pillow readjustment, I nestle myself into the pages of The Luminous Solution and two hours later I gently close the book. There is nothing that compares to that feeling of catching a line and giving in to being carried downstream by writing so inviting, you are compelled to let go of everything that holds you to the banks of the present moment and be swept away. 222 pages later, I reluctantly pull myself out of the water, deliciously soaked by Charlotte Wood’s sentences.
“This thing: the inner life”, Wood begins, “What is it, really?” (p. 2) and how does one nurture its need for structure and unruliness so that it truly flourishes? (p. 3) She replies, “through transformative jolts sparked from conversation” (p. 17); in movement from grumpy struggle, to despair, to luminous solution (p. 20); and, by welcoming the beautiful foolishness of dreams (pp. 53-54). “The world is full of destructive hate, so fan inner dead embers to fuel and fire courage and hope” (p. 62) she urges, something that might be done by “serving the shimmer of senses” (p. 70); “letting in the light of a stranger’s eye” (p. 89); “waiting in the gap or overlap or blur” (p. 101, p. 104); “accepting the grit and the gift” (p. 104); and holding to laughter as a “subterranean river of possibility of and goodwill flowing beneath” your work (pp. 119-120). Wood’s writing about creative writing is beautiful and compelling, her sentences hold my writer’s heart gently and saturate my soul with inspiration. What’s not to love about escaping from domestication and escaping the satus quo? (p. 152) she asks – “love your writing and let your words love freely and abundantly” (p. 160); find the dark place where you can “take the shame and the rage and the confusion and the fear and lay it down, all of it, and stare it in the face” (p. 172); and, above all, don’t let the beauties of daily life slip unnoticed through your fingers (p. 189).
From words, to phrases, to sentences we leap
Despite a long list of accolades and public recognition, Wood insists that each time she begins a new book, she has no idea how to proceed [4]https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/awardwinning-author-charlotte-wood-challenges-the-solitary-artistic-struggle-20180716-h12qyg.html. She reflects, “That old question ‘must I always know nothing?’ no longer haunts, but consoles. Because the day I stop feeling like a beginner might be the day I know it’s time to put down the pen”. Follow and obey your own weird instincts, Wood urges, but be prepared to challenge and refresh them constantly. If you’re like me and often find yourself lost in dreams of becoming a full-time writer, this admission wraps around my own fledgling words like a warm blanket of hope—the Emily Dickinson kind with feathers [5]Emily Dickinson, 1970, The Complete Poems, #254, p. 116.. My own strange proclivities as a writer lean towards my love of words in and of themselves—their secret lives and impulses full of “echoes, memories, and associations” [6]Virginia Woolf, 2008, “Craftsmanship”, in Selected Essays, p. 88., “darting this way and that” [7]Virginia Woolf, 1942, “The man at the gate”, in Death of the Moth and Other Essays, p. 104., shuffling and changing as they leap and tumble from lips and pens in equal measure to mean many things. For Virginia Woolf, words are animate beings with agency and autonomy, and should be allowed to freely roam and Gertrude Stein similarly professes, “I like the feeling of words doing as they want to do”. [8]Gertrude Stein, 1969, Narration: Four Lectures, p. 15.. “Words—what chance and what energy! The forethink…these little so ancient agents never stop joking and bringing us gifts in secret” [9]Hélène Cixous, 1988, Stigmata: Escaping Texts, p. 196, Hélène Cixous avows, “And what words do between themselves – couplings, matings hyrbidizations—is genius”. [10]Hélène Cixous, 1988, Stigmata: Escaping Texts, p. 196. Virginia Woolf too mused with much admiration that words enjoy getting out and about in company, they belong to each other and like to hang together in sentences [11]Virginia Woolf, 2008, “Craftsmanship”, in Selected Essays, p. 88—this is where they come to life. “Indeed”, I imagine Ursula Le Guin nodding in agreement, it is “the sounds, rhythms, settings, characters, action, interaction, dialogue and feelings [of words] all working together that makes us hold our breath” [12]Ursula K. Le Guin, 1998, Steering the Craft, p. 23. to which Woolf replies with certainty, “All writing is nothing but putting words on the backs of rhythm. If they fall off the rhythm one’s done”. [13]Letter to Ethel Smyth, 7th April, 1933, in 1982, The Letters of Virginia Woolf : Vol. 5, p. 303. Sylvia Plath too described the work of writing as getting back to the “perfect rhythms & words binging & bonging in themselves: green, thin, whine – then phrases, then sentences”. [14]Sylvia Plath, 2000, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, p. 305.
If “words are the hooves of sentences” [15]Hélène Cixous, 1988, Stigmata: Escaping Texts, p. 121. as Hélène Cixous suggests, “Rhythm”, Ursula adds, is what keeps the song of a sentence going, “the horse galloping, the story moving”. [16]Ursula K. Le Guin, 1998, Steering the Craft, p. 23. Then, in an unusual sign of solidarity with Le Guin, Gertrude Stein confesses her own affinity to the inherent musicality of a word sequence whereby she “liked to set a sentence for herself as a sort of tuning fork and metronome and then write to that time and tune”. [17]Getrude Stein, 1990, “The autobipography of Alice Toklas”, in Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein, p. 194.. Wood is singing the same song as Woolf, Le Guin and Stein when it comes to the musicality of a beautiful and compelling sentence, suggesting that it is the rhythm of language alone which has capacity to “argue, preach, threaten, jolt or suffocate as easily as it can soothe or invigorate” [18]Charlotte Wood, 2021, The Luminous Solution, p. 127. “From sentence to sentence we leap”[19]Hélène Cixous, 1988, Stigmata: Escaping Texts, p. 195. in an attempt to hold the whole world inside and perhaps in this way, even but for a moment, with hand on heart our writing murmurs, “We are the words, we are the music, we are the thing itself”[20]Virginia Woolf, 1976, Moments of Being: Unpublished Autobiographical Writings, p. 72..
Sentences that break open and blush
Woods, Woolf, Stein, Cixous and Le Guin speak of sentences as strings of words with sound patterns of sense making which move us far beyond thegrammatically complete. For them, sentences compel us to “feel” something and the etymological roots of the word itself, the Latin verb “sentire”, gesture towards the same. Le Guin goes a little further and talks about “being gorgeous” in writing, and my lexiphilic heart takes me by the hand with hope to search for the etymological roots of the word “gorgeous” and the lingering sense I have that the two words—“gorgeous” and “sentence”—are in close company. Gorgeous, such an affective word, with a braided backstory which the Merriam Webster [21]Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Gorgeous. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved March 15, 2023, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gorgeous tells me twists from a type of headdress called a “wimple” in English worn in the Middle Ages that covered the neck and head leaving only the face bare, and twirls to “gorgias” from gorge meaning “throat” which was the French name for the part of the headdress covering the throat and shoulders. Only fashionable women wore beautiful headdresses and slowly the meaning of gorgeous turned to refer to the entire headdress and then towards splendidly elegant and magnificent.
I cannot help but gently tug the sentiments of gorgeous and the way that Le Guin uses this beautiful adjective, to describe sentences that move with affect towards Dorothy Allison. Her books Trash (1988), Bastard Out of Carolina (1993), Skin: Talking about Sex, Class and Literature (1994), and Two or Three Things I Know for Sure (1995) are both full and flush with the underlying sense-ability she holds as a writer to craft sentences which “take the reader by the throat, break her heart, and heal it again”. [22]Dorothy Allison, 1994, Skin, p. 180.. Writing, Dorothy Allison in-sisters, “is the only way to make sure of my ongoing decision to live” [23]Dorothy Allison, 1988, Trash, p. 7., “to live fleshed and strengthened on the page” [24]Dorothy Allison, 1988, Trash, p. 7. with words and sentences that hang in the air like a neon reflection of a blush [25]Dorothy Allison, 1993, Bastard Out of Carolina, p. 4., and with each word touched, a world of feeling opened anew. [26]Dorothy Allison, 1995, Two or Three Things I Know for Sure, p. 91.
A list of ten gorgeous and compelling sentences
I cannot help but think of Sylvia Plath who held on tight for as long as she could to the imaginary of a new life that could be made through “words, colors & feelings” [27]Sylvia Plath, 2000, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, p. 327, words joining and moving in patterns beyond a litany of dreams. For some time now I have been taking note of gorgeous and compelling sentences that turn, twist and twirl words freely around in my heart to rhythms that crush just as they caress the world asunder, setting in motion a bittersweet yearning that lingers long after finishing reading—and here is a selection of ten of them that like Sylvia Plath, I am holding onto tightly for as long as I can. Like many lists, it too is category driven, dangerous, incomplete, and yet strangely necessary and comforting; but unlike items on most lists, these ten gorgeous and compelling sentences about words will never be crossed out and erased, but rather, etched indelibly in secret places to be touched and remembered over and over.
1.
Virginia Woolf , 1954, A Writer’s Diary, p. 194
“There’s no trifling with words—can’t be done: not when they’re to stand ‘forever’ ”.
2.
bell hooks, 1999, Remembered Rapture: The Writer at Work, p. 45
“That moment when I whirl with words is a space of transgression and I write to live”.
3.
Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being, p. 24
“For the time being, words scatter…are they fallen leaves?”
4.
Jeanette Winterson, Lighthousekeeping, p. 135
“Words are part of the silence that can be spoken”.
5.
Ursula K. Le Guin, 1989, Dancing at the Edge of the World, p. 169
“Words hold things”.
6.
Sylvia Plath, 2000, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, p. 191
“Words revolve in flame and keep the coliseum heart afire, reflecting orange sunken suns in the secret petals of ruined arches. yes, the glowing asbestos thorns and whistling flame flowers reflect the cells of the scarlet heart and the coliseum burns on, without a nero, on the brink of blackness. so words have power to open sesame and reveal liberal piles of golden metallic suns in the dark pit that wait to be melted and smelted in the fire of spring which springs to fuse lumps and clods into veins of radiance”.
7.
Simone de Beauvoir, 1974, All Said and Done, p. 192
“Words have this immense privilege: you can take them with you”.
8.
Hélène Cixous, 1988, Stigmata: Escaping Texts, p. 196
“Only words in love sow”.
9.
Patti Smith, 2017, Devotion, p. 26
“As I knelt to place the small bundle beneath her name, words formed, tumbling like a nursery song”.
10.
Virginina Woolf, 1931, The Waves, p. 95
“When I cannot see words curling like rings of smoke round me I am in darkness —I am nothing”.
References
| ↑1 | A fiercely eco-feminist friend and voracious reader often recommends books she has recently read she thinks I might like. For weeks Renee kept saying, “Oh Liz, you have to read The luminous solution, I think you’ll love it” and she was right. I had not heard of Charlotte Wood until then, even though her oeuvre is broad, and her writing attracts abundant critical acclaim. She is the author of six novels and three books of non-fiction, and her books are often named on prize lists. Animal people won the People’s Choice Award at the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards in 2013. The natural way of things was variously short and long listed for 14 literary prizes in 2016 and won the Stella Prize, the Indie Book and Fiction Book of the Year, and the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for fiction in 2016. Her most recent novel The weekend was shortlisted for the same in 2020. In 2017 her PhD on creativity, Looking for trouble: Problem finding processes in literary creativity, won the UNSW Arts and Social Sciences Dean’s Award for Best Doctoral Thesis. In 2019 Wood was listed on the Australian Financial Review’s 100 Women of Influence in 2019 and awarded a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for significant services to literature. |
|---|---|
| ↑2 | In 1998, Steering the Craft, p. 20. |
| ↑3 | In Brooks Landon, 2013, Building Great Sentences: How to Write the Kinds of Sentences You Love to Read. |
| ↑4 | https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/awardwinning-author-charlotte-wood-challenges-the-solitary-artistic-struggle-20180716-h12qyg.html |
| ↑5 | Emily Dickinson, 1970, The Complete Poems, #254, p. 116. |
| ↑6 | Virginia Woolf, 2008, “Craftsmanship”, in Selected Essays, p. 88. |
| ↑7 | Virginia Woolf, 1942, “The man at the gate”, in Death of the Moth and Other Essays, p. 104. |
| ↑8 | Gertrude Stein, 1969, Narration: Four Lectures, p. 15. |
| ↑9 | Hélène Cixous, 1988, Stigmata: Escaping Texts, p. 196 |
| ↑10 | Hélène Cixous, 1988, Stigmata: Escaping Texts, p. 196. |
| ↑11 | Virginia Woolf, 2008, “Craftsmanship”, in Selected Essays, p. 88 |
| ↑12, ↑16 | Ursula K. Le Guin, 1998, Steering the Craft, p. 23. |
| ↑13 | Letter to Ethel Smyth, 7th April, 1933, in 1982, The Letters of Virginia Woolf : Vol. 5, p. 303. |
| ↑14 | Sylvia Plath, 2000, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, p. 305. |
| ↑15 | Hélène Cixous, 1988, Stigmata: Escaping Texts, p. 121. |
| ↑17 | Getrude Stein, 1990, “The autobipography of Alice Toklas”, in Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein, p. 194. |
| ↑18 | Charlotte Wood, 2021, The Luminous Solution, p. 127. |
| ↑19 | Hélène Cixous, 1988, Stigmata: Escaping Texts, p. 195. |
| ↑20 | Virginia Woolf, 1976, Moments of Being: Unpublished Autobiographical Writings, p. 72. |
| ↑21 | Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Gorgeous. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved March 15, 2023, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gorgeous |
| ↑22 | Dorothy Allison, 1994, Skin, p. 180. |
| ↑23, ↑24 | Dorothy Allison, 1988, Trash, p. 7. |
| ↑25 | Dorothy Allison, 1993, Bastard Out of Carolina, p. 4. |
| ↑26 | Dorothy Allison, 1995, Two or Three Things I Know for Sure, p. 91. |
| ↑27 | Sylvia Plath, 2000, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, p. 327 |
Oh how your writing strikes a match to the pile of dried leaves I have become! “Let it blaze, let it blaze,” you respond in my mind. And I will. I will drag myself from this desk of his making and set myself before the blank page to find the rhythm of my words in the light of the blazing leaves around me. “Just gorgeous!” I will exclaim when I am done, not because of the sentences I will have written but because I will have joined with you and the women you write about in our gorgeous sisterhood of writing.