I have been unfaithful. Dabbling with serious intent. Nonfiction. It’s true. I have given tighter reign to my new interest than my first love. I have lifted my lines, indulged in punctuation, even put a loose girdle around some emotion. It is a strange thing to be two-timing my words. I have never really thought of myself as anything but a poet. I could never be a fiction writer. The dialogue is daunting for me. There are times when I have played with voice. It was just a voice I was led to by the curiosity of what it would be like to inhabit another’s thoughts, but in today's world, it could easily be mistaken for appropriation. I commuted daily for fifteen years in New York City. I was constantly people watching. I used my headphones as a barrier (no one used to talk to someone listening to a Walkman.) Most of the time my Walkman was actually turned off so I could subtly listen to conversations, hoping to hear interesting lines. Sometimes, when I arrived home after a long day at work, various people that I saw on my daily commute would speak through me. There was a woman with a tin foil hat who paced the F line platform every morning downtown at the Broadway and Lafayette stop; I found it interesting to try and imagine what that woman was thinking. Her hat was incredibly well designed. It was summer and it seemed to be more of a fashion statement than a pursuit of warmth.
While I was attempting to piece together my memoir, utilizing three decades worth of my poetry, I began to realize there were pieces missing — vital bits of information which led me to wonder what construction I could use to cement a fuller picture of my story. I had never really thought of exploring the area of creative nonfiction, but after meeting some nonfiction writers at Bread Loaf, I came to the realization that all of my work is, in reality, nonfiction. My poetry is taken directly from my life. This recognition caused me to start to explore the link between the lyric nonfiction essay and poetry.
I can quite vividly see this link in some of my favorite fiction writing — writing that has always inspired me. As a matter of fact as much as I consider myself a poet, and am inspired by many poets, I have always found that I am most inspired to write by the fiction of writers such as Toni Morrison, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Zora Neale Hurston, William Faulkner, and Vladimir Nabokov. Each of these writers finds a way to weave poetry into every line of their language, and I am always fascinated by their skill. I have read “Absalom, Absalom!” seven times. Each time I re-read it I take something new away. Faulkner’s rhythms intrigue me; his sentence structure beseeches me. Each line of Toni Morrison’s is a small poem itself. When I read, “Pale Fire” or any other of Nabokov’s works I find that there is genius in each line. If you look past the obviously deplorable character of Humbert Humbert, and read Lolita for what I see it as — a love story, a disturbing love story but a love story nonetheless — the writing is incredibly tailored, the story woven flawlessly. (Needless to say, I am not often invited to join many book clubs.)
When I write poetry, it is usually out of an instant response to any given situation. When I began to explore nonfiction, I realized I was walking through a different door. As a poet, I look for the circular loop, the leap back that ties my words together and allows me take a bow off the page. When I first workshopped my memoir as nonfiction, with my poetry interspersed between essays, one of the comments I received was that I needed to break the circle. I am still trying to break the circle. I am grappling each day to even understand what the circle means. Nonfiction presents a whole new set of guidelines and terms to learn. The learning of them will come. What interests me most is how to bridge the gap between poetry and nonfiction, how to make my lines true to my voice without them becoming too operatic in an essay format. I have been working at this for a year; writing, writing, writing, and writing some more. I have been given the grace of a group of women that I met at Bread Loaf. They each have written or are writers of non-fiction. I feel as if each time I meet with them and we workshop I get the benefit of the best of three MFA’s. I have spent the better part of this year with my manuscript laid out in front of me, trying desperately and deliberately to understand what, "breaking the circle" means — to see the circle. As I work with a new set of tools, stumbling, mumbling, and tossing through pages of comments to break the circle without crossing my line, I am reminded consistently of this Henry James quote:
"We work in the dark - we do what we can - we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.”
In January I will take my first official nonfiction workshop. I will listen and learn. I will continue to try and find the line between poetry and nonfiction. I will detect, dominate, and destroy that malevolent circle.
To purchase Henry James, The Middle Years visit: http://www.barnesandnoble.com, or http://www.indiebound.org/indie-next-list, or visit your local bookstore.
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