Glenn Kubish

I collect sentences. Here are four more from the forest of pages read. The trucks filed by against the background of the white church in a long string like the days of a man's life, and it seemed as though it would never end.  - Chekhov, A Misfortune The trucks filing by are rail cars moving across the Russian landscape while Ilyin begs Sofya to accept his love. Without a new sentence, Chekhov artfully links the words that describe the physical scene ( The trucks filed by against the background of the white church in a long string...)  to the words that describe the sweet, bewildering feeling of being there to watch a passing train pull a new emptiness into view ( ...the days of a man's life, and it seemed as though it would never end. ) , counting on a simple coupling word ( like ) to do its work, and hold. "It's as if the Venetian paintings were made to frighten us," said my Enishte later. "And it isn't enough that we be in awe of the...

Wordsworth, de Botton reminds us during this, the Christmas season of reading books and listening to music and remembering events, believed that spots of time spent in nature were, when recalled, correctives against the corrosive work done to human souls trapped in the enmity and envy that course through cities and industrial workplaces. This is from Book Twelfth, The Prelude: There are in our existence spots of time, That with distinct pre-eminence retain A renovating virtue, whence—depressed By false opinion and contentious thought. Or aught of heavier or more deadly weight, In trivial occupations, and the round Of ordinary intercourse—our minds Are nourished and invisibly repaired; A virtue, by which pleasure in enhanced, That penetrates, enables us to mount When high, more high, and lifts us up when fallen. The pic of Shelagh standing red-coated in the September snow at Pyramid Lake is a spot of time from 2017 for me. The video is poetry in slow motion: ...