Still looking for the book or more likely short story by John Steinbeck that contained the phrase, “The sun cut itself on a sharp peak and bled into the valley.”
According to a Google Books search it is from early in A Cup of Gold.
Interestingly, it is also a poem in a collection of poetry by Len Gasparini in this slightly different form:
The sun cut itself
on a mountain peak, and bled
into the valley
Wonder if that is coincidence, unintentional plagiarism, or intentional plagiarism.
BTW, apparently the actual Steinbeck phrase is: “The sun cut itself on a sharp hill and bled into the valleys.”
Gasparini used the phrase as written above. And that’s the entirety of his poem. Dang, poetry is easy! I wonder if I can grab a line of Austen or Hemingway and call it a complete poem?
Thanks, obfuciatrist and choie. I just found via a web search that it was by Steinbeck but I didn’t get to the source story title. It was in an anthology of short stories in my10th grade English class many years ago and it’s been bugging me for a long time, more so recently. The English teacher just died last month at age 96. I wonder which quote predated which. What wonders this wed and forum are.
Cup of Gold is from 1929, the poetry collection is labeled as works from 1967-1998, so Steinbeck definitely gets seniority.
I just ordered it (Cup of Gold) and other items from B&N. com to add to my vast collection. [auto-hijack]: One of the other items is Pete Seeger’s folk cd version of Ariran. I’ve been wanting that, although in a more popular (unknown) version c. '60s that has also been bugging me since then. I’ll re-search that.
I see Seeger has it on 8 cds via Amazon. Must have been his I remember.