October 5, 2024

Something I thought about:

• I had a realization about poetic voice and why things became so muddled during poetry school — when I studied poetry as an undergrad, I learned to revise for narrative effect. This was my advisor’s strength. Frank Bidart rearranges lines of a poem for dramatic effect — he can tell a story and knows how best to order and break lines. But we studied craft and technique more formally in poetry school, and I started to sound stilted and too poetic — and we spent a lot of time talking about “finding one’s voice” in workshop. I just read through some old journals and realized that my voice hasn’t changed in decades — my nonfiction and journal-writing voices have always been consistent, but I’ve changed when and how I apply poetic techniques for dramatic effect or to more evocatively express an idea. That’s it. And I realized that in poetry school, we overcomplicated it. You don’t need to find voice. You have one. The trick is learning how to use poetic techniques to further shape what you’d like to say. When craft takes over, there’s a self-consciousness to the writing that makes everything sound somewhat stilted or off. The lines don’t sound true or authentic. And the truth of the experience is what matters.

Something I did: 

• Wrote.
• Took some intentional breaks.
• Meetings, demos, PMing — the usual
• Went out with the neighborhood moms
• Gave a workshop on Place in Fiction
• Went to see The Wild Robot

Something I read: 

• Slow reads: How to Live Together by Roland Barthes, The Long Form by Kate Briggs, The Mirror and the Light by Hilary mantel, and War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy