“I sat in the chair and looked at the floor and prayed for Catherine.”
–From Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms
The weakness of this sentence complicates Hemingway, with its hypotactic heart monitor beeping on the frantic “and.”
Adam Robinson is the author of Adam Robison and Other Poems.
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John Madera is the author of Nervosities (Anti-Oedipus Press, 2024) and Nomad Science (Spuyten Duyvil Press, forthcoming in 2026). His fiction is also published in Conjunctions, Salt Hill, Hobart, The &Now Awards 2: The Best Innovative Writing, and many other journals. His poetry is also published in elimae, Sixth Finch, Contrapuntos, and elsewhere. His criticism is published in American Book Review, Bookforum, The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Rain Taxi: Review of Books, The Believer, The Brooklyn Rail, and many other venues. Recipient of an M.F.A. in Literary Arts from Brown University, two-time New York State Council on the Arts awardee John Madera lives in New York City, where he runs Rhizomatic and manages and edits Big Other.
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After reading William Gass’s essay “And” on that almost invisible conjunction, I don’t think I can ever take it, or any other word, for that matter, for granted:
Definitely– also the great opening word of Pound’s _Cantos_:
“And then went down to the ship…”