Monday, January 23, 2012

Her last sentence

I've been reading a lot lately.  I found HER by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (New Directions - 1960) at The Haunted Bookstore in Iowa City on Friday the 13th.  It was in the middle of the stack I brought home, but I finished it last night.  Here is the final sentence / paragraph.  Additional comments to follow.

And so see now my blown newspaper once again tossed up upon the wind with my obituary writ in it ahead of time so all I have to do is give them a head for it even if a letter's printed backward in one line and all I have to do is give them my head and I'm off to see the wizard the wonderful wizard of odds against me in the nowhere void and nothing more to kiss and no more eyes and longing hair as when that time under the great trees where the crickets were, suddenly she stopt laughing, put my hands upon her breasts, and then, and so, and then so down and down we go, my granite dangle hanging down to dive through flesh of air, I smear my forehead ash my white skin sandals on I see dawn's angels stoned for good I see green lights turn yellow in the mad brain dust the tar roofs bleed I see God grips the genitals to catch illusionary me stunned down in the air of death's insanity to kiss me off he plays the deepsea catch he reels me in.
Comments: 
  • That was on page 157.  More than once I counted multiple pages without punctuation, yet I read the whole thing.  A few months ago I wouldn't have even made it through that sentence.  Did you?
  • It takes amazing skill for a writer to create some of the sentences in that book.  That said, I don't recommend it, though I mostly enjoyed it.
  • I'm pretty sure Ferlinghetti was sitting next to a stack of bennies THIS tall as he wrote this thing.

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