In that first class, she wore the pearls and a tab collar peeped over her sweater, but she looked as if she would punch you if you didn’t behave. She walked with a cowgirl’s stride into the classroom, and from her bag withdrew her legal pad covered in notes, a thermos of coffee and a bag of Brach’s singly wrapped caramels, and then sat down. She undid the top of the thermos with a swift twist, poured a cup of coffee into the cup that was also the thermos top, and sipped at it as she gave us a big smile and looked around the room.
Hi, she said, sort of through the smile.
Monday, November 23, 2009
You want description? I'll show you description
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10 comments:
well, now that is descriptive, I could see her in the front of the room.
Something wonderful to inspire and aspire too!
This is perfect.
It also perfectly describes my English professor from last year.
That whole article was amazing. I felt like I knew her when I was finished reading.
You know what's great about this? I read that essay one time the day it came out. When I saw the preview of this blog post - which showed only the first sentence and a half - I immediately recognized the paragraph and remembered who wrote it and who was being described.
Damn.
Do you think that technique would work on grade fives?
I love what Kate said - that she could recognize who wrote the essay and what it was about just from a brief blurb, because she remembered it.
That's awesome.
I read this when it first came out and immediately recognized it. It was the singly wrapped caramels that stuck out at me (I love the idea of the teacher eating caramels all throughout the class). Beautiful description.
In short, descriptions should be characteristics that define and not statistics that describe.
I love it, especially the last line!
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