Klinkenborg’s hymn to prose
Verlyn Klinkenborg’s long poem celebrates short sentences. The Rural Life by Verlyn Klinkenborg. Back Bay Books, 224 pp. Several Short Sentences About Writing by Veryln Klinkenborg. Knopf, 224 pp. “You’ll make long sentences again, but they’ll be short sentences at heart,” writes Verlyn Klinkenborg in Several Short Sentences About Writing. Is that wise and poetic or opaque and unhelpful? This passage from Klinkenborg’s The Rural Life, 2003, may show what he means: The Fourth of July steals over a small …