Award-winning journalist and novelist Pete Hamill told The Writer Magazine about the rhthym of his sentences:
“I do think about the rhythm, often before beginning a passage. Is it blues? Chamber music? Bebop? Or mambo? I don’t do this mechanically, but I want to hear some of the words before I put them down. I always try to write sentences that end in hard words, so that I don’t even need a period. This is obviously a lesson from poetry. For instance, ‘I hit him with a rock’ is better than ‘I threw a rock at him.’”
I'm not sure how many people read poetry these days--I confess I seldom do--but he's right in saying that it has lessons to teach us about how to write powerfully. Maybe it's time to dig out the poetry anthology...
