Sing to It
Amy Hempel

Poetry in Prose – Amy Hempel is a mesmerizing writer. Her stories, often only a page or two in length, are foolers – you think they’re light as a feather and then you’re left feeling the density of their weight. Like the greatest poets, Hempel knows how to say the most by saying the least. And she excels at the music of writing, the creation of sentences – using vocabulary, cadence, punctuation – that create melody and rhythm. This passage, from the collection’s longest story, “Cloudland,” is just one example:

“’Happy New Year,’ people call out wherever one goes.

Sure, I’ll play along: ‘Happy New Year,’ I say back.

Had the last year ended?

What if you are someone who does not know when something is over? What if you are the last one standing when others have left the concert, the theater, the crime-addled city, the busted love affair? What if you look for a sign and a sign doesn’t come. Or a sign comes but you miss it. What if you have to make a decision on your own and it feels like a body blow, falling back on yourself.”