Anacoluthon

CRAFT TERM

Sep 21

An anacoluthon is an unexpected discontinuity in the expression of ideas within a sentence, leading to a form of words in which there is logical incoherence of thought.

via Wikipedia

This is a technique in which we throw out all conventional grammatical sequences—the meaning is understood, but the sentence structure is unfamiliar. This is also about the sequence of ideas happening in an unexpected order. Sometimes it looks like an interjection—you start a sequence of thoughts, but it’s interrupted by another—Squirrel!!—unexpected thought.

Example

excerpt from "Hamlet" by William Shakespeare:

To die, to sleep–
No more–and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to?
To die, to sleep–
To sleep–perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub?

Prompt

For this exercise you'll need 3 books + a timer:

Set the timer for 2 minutes and open book 1: pick the first recognizable subject, verb, or descriptor and use it to begin writing a sentence. Write until the time is up.

Adjust the timer to 1 min, 30 seconds and go to book 2. Start a new sentence with a subject or phrase from this book. Continue on, switching books and decreasing the time until you've gathered several discordant sentences. Now, weave your sentences together into a poem. Remember that you are aiming for a logical incoherence of thought!