american sentences
 

quote=paul nelson

• american sentences as a poetic form was allen ginsberg's effort to make american the haiku. if haiku is seventeen syllables going down in japanese text, he would make american sentences seventeen syllables going across, linear, like just about everything else in america
  
  
• american sentences are one line, 17 syllable sentences
  
  
• american sentences work best when there is an aha! moment and when the modifier comes in the last word, or even last syllable:
  
  
• examples:
  
  

  four skinheads stand in the streetlight rain chatting under an umbrella.
  october 4, 1987
  
  outside ritzy pine street shops, two legless men among those seeking change.
  August 8, 1990
  
  ................................allen ginsberg

  
  
• post as many/few words as you want as long as sentence=17syllables
  
  
• write a "go it alone" entire sentence OR start/finish "communal" sentences - just complete any "communal" sentence before posting a "go it alone" sentence

to begin:


station café

.

station café she sits wonders and stares at white walls with no meaning

The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love.

he was bleeding, the second man

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

he was bleeding, the second man she lost her heart to that August day.

Pavement reflects grey

I thought all the sentences had to be seventeen syllables long.

pavements reflect grey, polkadotted with last saturday's confetti.

Twenty thousand feet in the sky

Twenty thousand feet in the sky, her thoughts float out onto bloated clouds.

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

If I am out of my mind, it's all right with me, thought Moses Herzog.

He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.

They scrubbed for all they were worth but the stain