Prose is paragraphs, prose is sentences

This isn’t quite right—poetry, too, can be in paragraph form (see Auden, for example, or Frost, or lots of other examples)—but Basbøll is on to something here.

I’m reminded of Nicholson Baker’s hilarious “From the Index of First Lines,” which is truly the poetic counterpart to Basbøll’s argument in prose:

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2 thoughts on “Prose is paragraphs, prose is sentences

  1. “his paragraphs are clearly about something, they “represent” something, namely, the music of Johnny Cash. But a sentence by itself does not do this.”

    He should read some of Churchill’s sentences.

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