Daily Themes 2: Syntax

A mini lesson on putting words together.

Welcome back to Daily Themes! I was overjoyed with the response to the first installment on metaphors, and I’m back with a second installment on syntax. I hope you are having a good day. February is so gray in Connecticut, but it’s finally warm enough to wear only one pair of pants.

Before we begin, a few notes:

• Syntax refers to the arrangement of words and phrases that create sentences in a language. It falls under the umbrella of grammar.

  • Four of the core tenets of syntax are length, relationship of elements, rhythm, and parallelism.

• Syntax is why the famous Thomas Paine quote “Times like these try men’s souls” sounds better than “How trying it is to live in these times!” or “Soulwise, these are trying times.”

  • Though both of the revisions are grammatically correct, they lack a certain rhythm or cadence that has made the original formulation last for 300 years. This is style.

• A periodic sentence is one that contains multiple intervals, but is rooted in a main point that often comes at the end.

  • Periodic suspension adds tension and the passage gains energy through syntax.

  • An example from Toni Morrison’s Beloved: “Past the sheds where the dogs lay in deep depression, past the two guard shacks, past the
    stable of sleeping horses, past the hens whose bills were bolted into their feathers, they waded.”

    • “They waded” is the main point. Morrison makes you wait for it.

• Each theme should be between 250-300 words. If the prompt has two parts, split the word count accordingly.

• There are only two prompts this week because of abnormal class scheduling around MLK day. I had a lot of fun with them.

Week 2 Prompts:

1. Write a theme about anything at all in which you vary your sentence length from beginning to end. You can either start short and get longer or start longer and get shorter. Base your decision on which you think best suits the substance. [Note: you can define shortness either literally (few words) or more liberally (just getting quickly to subject and verb).]

2. Write a theme consisting of at least one periodic sentence—main verb phrase saved till the end—that helps you create tension until the end of said sentence. You could make the whole theme, or most of the theme, a single periodic sentence, but you don’t have to. Remember that the phrases between the commas, with which you’ll unfold the sentence, could be “equal” to each other (like items in a list) or complex/subordinated (using which, who that to signal their interrelationships).

My Week 2 Themes:

1. My mother stood. She picked up the kettle. Steam rose out of its curved spout. The wisps were like silver ghosts in the cold, still air. She poured the boiling water into two identical ceramic mugs. One had a chipped handle, from when she slammed the dishwasher shut on Sunday. Her left hand cupped a lemon while her right sliced the fruit in half, resting the blade when it reached the flesh of her palm. She squeezed the juice into our cups, and there was such great force in her fingers I could see the veins protruding on top of her knuckles, uneven and blue. I reached for the broken mug, raised the rim to my lips, blew on the surface of the water, but still, the scorching liquid burned the tender pink insides of my mouth. I dropped the mug on the counter, and it broke into thick, jagged pieces, swimming in a pool of lemon water, transparent with bits of pulp scattered like bodies in the sea.

   As I stood there, frozen, realizing my skin had torn on the broken handle, blood pooling in between my fingers, mixing with the acidity of the citrus, causing a fresh, sharp burn so stunning it was impossible to ignore, my mother screamed. Because my mouth was numb now, my tongue red raw, my hand still bleeding, my eyes fixed on the table, the site of destruction, and all I could hear was a voice that sounded like my mother, but angrier, more distant, shouting about the mug, the mess, my clumsy grip and my weakness, my lack of care for her lemon water and her kitchen and her kindness, I didn’t say anything back.  

2. As she looked in front of the mirror, the perfume that she bought in California because it smelled like tree resin and pink pepper souring on her wrists, her gauzy cream-colored skirt catching on the sweat between her thighs, the silver earrings that she found in her mother’s closet and borrowed without asking beginning to rust from wearing them in the shower, she started to dance. She watched her reflection lift her arms above her head, controlled and graceful in the silence. The lights from the parking lot seeped through her blinds, illuminating her hair with a soft orange halo.

   Even though her mother told her to cut thick bangs to cover up her wide forehead, her father forbade her from wearing makeup, her brother told her to stay away from his friends, she couldn’t remember the last time she went to a party and someone introduced themselves to her, all the shoes she wore as a teenager were too tight now, her eyebrows were over-plucked and stopped growing back, and the smile lines on her cheeks were deepening into permanence, she knew she was beautiful. She knew because of the way she moved.

   When she closed her eyes, she saw bursts of scattered color, hazy fireworks set to music that she could not hear but felt in her limbs, dictating the rhythm of her motion. And when she opened them, she saw that she was the only thing glowing in the darkness of her room. 

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Daily Themes 3 will be on SOUND. Please do share your responses if you write them in the comments!!!!!