I'm certainly not about to look any gift horses in the mouth and all contributions are welcome.
But especially I am looking forward to finding some "high art", an isolated sentence or two that one can savor, even torn from its context, and perhaps a brief explication telling why it works so well for the
you who suggested it.
Of course, it isn't an order (god forbid), just a shivering little wish sent on a cold and rainy day from the north where winter will soon have us physically and mentally snowed-in again.
PS. And perhaps a tag telling who wrote and/or translated it? I think I recognize Nabokov above; the text is indeed well-writ and holds one's interest--but musical?
Consider the poetry in John Steinbeck's opening para of "The Grapes of Wrath", more poetry than we find in a lot of poems--the rhythm, the repetition, the parallels, imagery, metaphor (
green bayonets), personification (
rains came gently, protect themselves), the sensory quality.
To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth. The plows crossed and recrossed the rivulet marks. The last rains lifted the corn quickly and scattered weed colonies and grass along the sides of the roads so that the gray country and the dark red country began to disappear under a green cover. In the last part of May the sky grew pale and the clouds that had hung in high puffs for so long in the spring were dissipated. The sun flared down on the growing corn day after day until a line of brown spread along the edge of each green bayonet. The clouds appeared, and went away, and in a while they did not try any more. The weeds grew darker green to protect themselves, and they did not spread any more. The surface of the earth crusted, a thin hard crust, and as the sky became pale, so the earth became pale, pink in the red country and white in the gray country.
Cross posted with Dean.