I ran into a clerk at Barnes and Noble, while buying a volume of W.S. Merwin poetry, who said that she wrote fiction and really couldn't "get into" poetry, didn't understand it, often felt confused by it, etc. I offered that reading and writing poetry only enhances fiction writing. I am not sure she was convinced. But I am. However, of late, I cannot find any poetry in my head at all. I don't want to say what I have stuck there--in my head--because it is sad and mundane and boring and distracting. I am also reading The Anthologist (about a stuck poet, more or less) and that's not helping. So, let's get it started. Here's a site to go to that I think will jog anyone besides me who needs to be jogged (links to journals, their content and their submission guidelines). http://www.writehabit.org/journals.html
It's rather inspiring really.
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Hurray! A post and a meaty one.
ReplyDeleteI'm finding one thing enormously helpful in my fiction writing (yes, lowly form with bulging uneven eyes, it feels inadequate in the presence of poetry):
we're all having to read (a lot) critical work and fiction pieces (two collections or novels or combo a month) and write on what we read as well as write quite a bit of new creative work. Doing the two at the same time is sparking all kinds of ideas and new approaches.
That's wonderful, Rimas. I am sure this is going to be a very fruitful time of your life.
ReplyDeleteTo return to P's point about the fiction writer who cannot grok poetry: for me, the involvement in poetry is has been all to the good, esp because of the close reading we do as a group.
ReplyDeleteI think in most places one sees that poetry demands the best writing, short stories demand better writing than novels, novels may not be able to contain sustained writing at the higher levels.
What I think I see as a reader, though, is that the most talented writers (if I don't include our poetry group, of course) seem to be in the short story form. Some do only this form, or mostly this form (Mary Gaitskill, William Trevor, Alice Munro) while others write novels also. Also, while I like Ondatje's poems, I think his novels actually suffer from his dense prose. I don't think, for instance, Paul O'Neill could write a first rate short story or poem (judging by his novel) but that his novel "Netherlands" was first rate as a novel.
Karen,
ReplyDeletewould love to get your favorite books from your reading list in your program. My VCFA colleagues have been posting their reading lists on our (vcfa) blog and there are some great leads on books to get. Just got a great book by Gluck, "Proofs and Theories"...
We can start a "reading list" thread here...
oh, woe is me, we have an unpopulated blog and we are all writers. I am responding to my own post of 10 months ago. Sad again. Currently, today, April 8, a Saturday, I am in New Jersey, wonderful Wayne, New Jersey, at William Patterson University at a writers' conference. Francine Prose was the keynote speaker. Such a good choice. She LOOKS like a writer. She WRITES. She READS like a writer. And she speaks thoughtfully. In any event, I am now, right now, in a workshop about blogging and, so, here I am trying to populate an already existing blog. How do we get this baby off the ground? RIMAS!! What is the address that we send people to? Why don't I know this?
ReplyDeletebwha ha ha!! It's April 9. Couldn't even get that wright. so very very sad.
ReplyDeleteI saw Edward Albee's "At Home at the Zoo" at Arena State on Saturday and the young man in Act II (James McMenamin, who plays "Jerry") is riveting, fabulous, awesome. And Albee's words were poetry. How lucky we are to be interested in be interested in how words craft thought and emotion.
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