Snow Was General: Writing Beautiful Sentences

Last night, snow was general all over central Ohio. If you’re a James Joyce fan, you’ll hear the echo of this sentence to the end of Joyce’s story, “The Dead.” Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless…

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Music on the Page

Here on Easter Sunday, I’m thinking about sounds from the Sundays of my childhood. The whisper of the tissue-thin pages of Bibles being turned in church, the creaking of the wooden pews as someone settled their weight or leaned forward in prayer, the sonorous voice of the man who sang with the spirit that filled…

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The Sound at the End: Narrative and Music

Each night before bed, Cathy turns on the dishwasher and sets the security alarm. I listen to the  whir of water, the beeps of the alarm. As we drift off to sleep, there’s the hum of traffic from the nearby highway, or the sound of our cat, Stella, jumping onto the bed. At the end…

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