skeleton architecture

And where that language does not yet exist, it is our poetry which helps to fashion it. Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before

—Audre Lorde, “Poetry Is Not A Luxury” (1977)

sentence diagram

Then teacher would draw lines that tied various parts of her sentence together, “at the door” descending like a staircase from its noun. This moment made me happy. I was perhaps the only student in the class who relished diagramming; who could while away a happy hour picturing predicates docking at the ports of their subjects like ships. Levels one through six were called grammar schools then, attesting to the importance once placed upon the subject.

—William Gass, “The Aesthetic Structure of the Sentence,” Life Sentences: Literary Judgements and Accounts (Alfred A. Knopf, 2012)