Saturday, June 9, 2007

Experimentation with original forms and structure

2 comments:

Alison Terry Kirkpatrick said...

Free Verse embedded into prose:
I took the novel from him and glanced at the cover. Bridge to Terabithia . . . My life changed when I started reading. I was different.
Who was this Katherine Paterson? Who was this Jesse and Leslie? People the writer knew? I could hardly read this book fast enough.
And when I did
when I got to the end
when I got to the end and
Leslie died
and Jesse was left alone without his best friend
I cried so hard . . . I couldn’t tell Mother Victoria a thing about drowning or running or painting.
–from The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams












Marrying Uncle Hyrum is enough to send me away from here.
But if Father can help me . . .
If I ever leave
(should I even think this?
no, I shouldn’t even think this)
if I ever leave
(maybe I could)
I’ll find me a house
with a piano
and doctors to help
my mother
and no old man
no uncle
to be my husband.
–from The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams







Joshua has seen me walking toward Patrick and the Ironton County Mobile Library on Wheels, even if he doesn’t know that’s where I’ve gone. He’s told me he’s watched me walking for years.
Does that mean other people have seen, too?
Have they seen me go?
I’ve been leaving the Compound forever, since I could almost walk.
With Mother Sarah and Father first.
With Emily.
Then with Laura.
Then alone.
Walking past the fence.
Walking down the red dirt road. A washboard road.
Walking to nowhere, then turning around and coming back.
Are they so used to me walking the distance,
outside our fences,
where somehow the air smells different,
are they so used to my walking
that they don’t notice anything more?
My heart thumps as I walk past the God Squad. Brother Adamson nods at me, then turns away. I let out a slow breath of air. Squinch my eyes at the light. Walk when I want to run. First to my tree to hide my book in the leafy branches. And then home.
Where my father waits for me.
–from The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams

Alison Terry Kirkpatrick said...

“If I was going to kill Uncle Hyrum,” I whisper onto her ice-cold face, as she calms in my arms, “I’d do it in Africa.”

HOW CAN I EAT with him?
I hate him. Hate him.
How can I marry him?
I am sick to the very center.
I must think of a way out of this.
–from The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams