Poetics and Pahala
Hi all,
Hmm…synopsis. My statement of poetics is in the form of a fictional interview with Bill Moyers twenty years in the future in which I am perhaps the world’s first living, critically acclaimed, billionaire poet. If that’s not entertaining enough of a thought there’s also the fact that our “past” is revealed over the course of the questioning. Explained as a regretable alcoholic misadventure on my part, he’s eventually revealed to be a decrepit old man whose brain had been addled by hormone injections. Anyway. My main points are basically that my writing stems from the desire to elicit emotion in readers (which I find helpful to discuss in terms of Lorca’s “duende”), to exercise my voice as an artist (politically or otherwise, because unfortunately, politics have the tendency to reach into your life whether you like it or not), and to use the therapeutic aspects of writing to help promote (my own and others) understanding and healing. Variety of examples included.
In reading Saturday Night at the Pahala Theater while writing about duende--that emotional gut-check or turn a lot of good poems seem to have--I was struck by Lois Ann Yamanaka’s control of powerful emotion in her poems. Sometimes it hits you at the end, sometimes it sneaks up on you while you’re laughing, but the check (the turn, the deepening of the poem, whatever you wanna call it) is usually there somewhere. I tend to think this is related to the strength and believability of the characters’ voices and the way the book is occasionally structured as series of monologues. In addition, her poems are rife with details and stories (ah, oh helpful board list) and another useful tool—believable/realistic humor. Her humor often mixed in with pain and anger in her character’s attempts to deal with truly difficult and emotional situations. Not that the characters think they’re being particularly funny, a lot of the time they’re pissed off or just trying to deal with the fairly disturbing and illogical situations their lives and relationships throw at them. For example, “Tita: On Fat” cracked me up, but it also managed to deal with the illogic of the whole “body image” and “women and fat issue” in a realistic way. I’ve never read anything termed a “poetic novella” before, but it’s a fascinating thing to watch unfold. Perhaps, if this makes since, one of the reasons it works is that she takes her characters as seriously as they take themselves. Anyway, I can’t wait to hear her voice put to them next time.
Hmm…synopsis. My statement of poetics is in the form of a fictional interview with Bill Moyers twenty years in the future in which I am perhaps the world’s first living, critically acclaimed, billionaire poet. If that’s not entertaining enough of a thought there’s also the fact that our “past” is revealed over the course of the questioning. Explained as a regretable alcoholic misadventure on my part, he’s eventually revealed to be a decrepit old man whose brain had been addled by hormone injections. Anyway. My main points are basically that my writing stems from the desire to elicit emotion in readers (which I find helpful to discuss in terms of Lorca’s “duende”), to exercise my voice as an artist (politically or otherwise, because unfortunately, politics have the tendency to reach into your life whether you like it or not), and to use the therapeutic aspects of writing to help promote (my own and others) understanding and healing. Variety of examples included.
In reading Saturday Night at the Pahala Theater while writing about duende--that emotional gut-check or turn a lot of good poems seem to have--I was struck by Lois Ann Yamanaka’s control of powerful emotion in her poems. Sometimes it hits you at the end, sometimes it sneaks up on you while you’re laughing, but the check (the turn, the deepening of the poem, whatever you wanna call it) is usually there somewhere. I tend to think this is related to the strength and believability of the characters’ voices and the way the book is occasionally structured as series of monologues. In addition, her poems are rife with details and stories (ah, oh helpful board list) and another useful tool—believable/realistic humor. Her humor often mixed in with pain and anger in her character’s attempts to deal with truly difficult and emotional situations. Not that the characters think they’re being particularly funny, a lot of the time they’re pissed off or just trying to deal with the fairly disturbing and illogical situations their lives and relationships throw at them. For example, “Tita: On Fat” cracked me up, but it also managed to deal with the illogic of the whole “body image” and “women and fat issue” in a realistic way. I’ve never read anything termed a “poetic novella” before, but it’s a fascinating thing to watch unfold. Perhaps, if this makes since, one of the reasons it works is that she takes her characters as seriously as they take themselves. Anyway, I can’t wait to hear her voice put to them next time.
posted by Eve at 2:29 PM
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