One Great Moment

“Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.”

Why is it great? This gorgeous definition of poetry could easily apply to literary journalism. Some of the best stories aren’t about something we’ve never heard of, but illuminates something…
December 6, 2017
Kari Howard

“NOVEMBER, noun. The eleventh twelfth of a weariness.”

Why is it great? I’ve never read Bierce’s satirical dictionary, but after coming across this sentence, it’s on the list.  With just a few words, he conjures up the dreariness…
November 29, 2017
Kari Howard

“Before the aurora borealis appears, the sensitive needles of compasses all over the world are restless for hours, agitating on their pins in airplanes and ships, trembling in desk drawers, in attics, in boxes on shelves.”

Why is it great? I admire the way Dillard turns a piece of natural science into a narrative of anticipation during which no human being makes an entrance.  The aurora…
November 15, 2017
Roy Peter Clark

“Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman’s sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.”

Why is it great? Take a look at the publication date: 1792. That’s more than two centuries ago, and two things are remarkable about this fact. 1) That Wollstonecraft, the…
November 8, 2017
Kari Howard

“Then away out in the woods I heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that’s on its mind and can’t make itself understood, and so can’t rest easy in its grave, and has to go about that way every night grieving.”

Why is it great? For Halloween, I decided to use this wonderfully spooky line from Mark Twain (who in his writing and his speaking was a true master of the…
October 30, 2017
Kari Howard

“Along with these tots and second-honeymooners, there were Harvard freshmen … “

“Along with these tots and second-honeymooners, there were Harvard freshmen, giving off that peculiar nervous glow created when a quantity of insouciance is saturated with insecurity; thick-necked Army officers with…
October 25, 2017
Kari Howard

“There was a kind of autumnal stain in the air that reminded me of the smell of leather work gloves, a high-school locker room at homecoming, the inside of an ancient canvas tent.”

Why is it great? Chabon has tapped into that greatest of sensory effects: the ability of smells to take you back to a place, a moment, a memory. The last…
October 18, 2017
Kari Howard

“The private estate was far enough away from the explosion so that its bamboos, pines, laurel, and maples were still alive … “

“The private estate was far enough away from the explosion so that its bamboos, pines, laurel, and maples were still alive, and the green place invited refugees — partly because…
October 11, 2017
Roy Peter Clark

“We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it.”

—Tennessee Williams, "The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore"
October 4, 2017
Kari Howard

“Something in the world links faces and leaves and rivers and woods and wind together and makes them a string of medallions with all our faces on them, worn forever round our necks, kin.”

Why is it great? Written long before every person carried a camera, before Facebook, back when “streaming” was just what water did as it coursed through its bed, Goyen, raised…
September 27, 2017
Julia Shipley