Sunday, April 10, 2016

Rhythm


Tom Rainey, jeanloupbertheau.com
Rhythm is important, and it's one of the things you notice about student work. Very often students don't, in the beginning, understand that their sentences are supposed to have certain rhythms and that the rhythms are part of the texture of the story. It's hard to teach, something that's more a knack than directly teachable. But it's central, it's a factor in every sentence, and you have to insist on it, remember to insist on it. (Donald Barthelme, "Interview with Bobbie Roe, 1988," in Not-Knowing: The Essays and Interviews of Donald Barthelme, p. 317)

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