Edith Södergran: Modernist Poet

“I don't create poetry, I create myself, for me my poems are a way to me.” ~Edith Södergran Introductory Note from Complete Poems

That my writing is poetry no one can deny, that it is verse I will not insist. I have attempted to bring certain refractory poems under one rhythm and have thereby discovered that I posse the power of the word and the image only under conditions of complete freedom, i.e. at the expense of the rhythm. My poems are to be taken as careless pencil sketches. As regards the content, I let my instinct build up what my intellect sees in expectation. My self-confidence depends on the fact that I have discovered my dimensions. It does not become me to make myself less than I am. Vierge Moderne I am no woman. I am neuter. I am child, a page and bold resolve, I am a laughing stripe of scarlet sun... I am a net for all greedy fish, I am a skoal to the glory of all women, I am a step towards hazard and ruin, I am a leap into freedom and self... I am the whisper of blood in the ear of the man, I am the soul's ague, the longing and refusal of the flesh, I am an entrance sign to new paradises. I am a flame, searching and brazen, I am water, deep but daring up to the knee, I am fire and water in free and loyal union... Complete Poems Edith Södergran translated by David McDuff Bloodaxe Books, Newcastle upon Tyne @1987, 2nd edition 1992 ISBN: 0 906427 38 X

Södergran (1892-1923) was a Finnish poet who wrote in Swedish. See this for more detail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_S%C3%B6dergran

Transient Worlds: On Translating Poetry: A Book Review

On Reflecting the Light: A Book Review

An excerpt from  New York Times Interview with Arthur Sze

How did you decide which poems to anthologize in “Transient Worlds”?

I wanted to blur the boundaries between reading, writing, translating poetry and writing original poetry. To do so I chose 23 poems from 13 languages, frequently selecting multiple translations of the same poem....
I started with poems that I loved, from Tao Qian’s “Drinking Wine” to Pablo Neruda’s “Sólo la Muerte” to Sappho 31. My method of selection was also informed by Indra’s net, which asserts that everything that happens in the cosmos is like a piece of glass suspended in an immense chandelier. When light shines into this space, each sliver of glass, each hanging jewel absorbs and reflects the light of every other.

Transient Worlds: On Translating Poetry is a fascinating read. Nearly all of the 23 poems have been translated by more than one person, allowing the reader to consider greater possibilities of meaning. In addition, Sze has provided background information about each poet, information about the original language, and more context. The poetry selections are excellent.Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish's "We Never Stop" is published in Transient Worlds. "I turned rebellion into poetry; rebellion turned me into a poet," said Najwan Darwish about his writing. Sze's anthology is a rich collection and it's also useful for teachers of poetry. Sze has often used translations to help students not only learn about the poem but also to learn about various poetic choices. He says the practice of translating, even if one is not fluent in the original language of the poem, will facilitate development of the student poets' own voices.  

The book is published by Copper Canyon Press, 2026. 

Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish's "We Never Stop" is haunting and evokes the plight of many people in the world, including those who are being cruelly detained and deported by Trump's campaign against immigration. You can read Darwish's poem on the poet's website.  http://www.najwandarwish.com/ 

Order the book: https://bookshop.org/p/books/transient-worlds-on-translating-poetry-arthur-sze/89399417149168d7


More: 
On Translation: U.S. Poet Laureate Arthur Sze and U.K. Poet Laureate Simon Armitage will join the stage for the first time, to discuss their new books: Sze's "Transient Worlds: On Translating Poetry" and Armitage's "Gilgamesh: A New Verse Translation." https://www.youtube.com/live/GBvqUNQDXoI?si=aInP54sGGZtiWOjv

The Writer's Voice: Forging One's Own Language

Every writer has a unique voice. By voice, I mean what you say and how you say it. So often, we think that we must follow the standardized rules for writing. This can make the work generic. This is why using A.I. to create work is a mistake. The longer I write and the longer that I teach writing, I understand how important it is to enable a new writer to listen and observe their own tendencies, to note what is unique or new in their writing and to follow this thread.  

Every person has unique perceptions. Each has unique locations, observations, and experiences. This is true even inside the mind. Each has particular landscape, particular encounters and events that happen in the families, in work settings, in relationships and in communities. These perceptions can be explored and developed into the "writer's voice." Partly, it comes about by following one's intuition, one's fascinations, one's tendencies.  In fact, I think this is key to forging one's own voice. 

I found this interview,"Writing is 80% Looking," that speaks so well to the idea of craft and what works in poetry or writing.  I'm not impressed by the interviewer (I hate his commercialization) but I am impressed with Ocean Vuong. He is an amazing poet and writer, and he has some very intriguing insights about the process of creating new writing. He speaks about the writing workshop, and I love how he (later in the video) analyzes the history and evolution of poetry/ news/novels/literature. 

If you are interested, look at this video about the writing workshop, particularly starting at 1:45 through 8:00 minutes. 

https://youtu.be/kn4r4CmWmUw?si=KXGrq0FkMhniqfB9

Another writer who I have long admired is Jhumpa Lahiri. In this discussion published on Lit Hub,  Jhumpa Lahiri and Chiara Barzini discuss writing in another language and"the mother tongue."  Lahiri was Bengali-American and wrote novels in English. But early on, she fell in love with the Italian language. Eventually, she learned Italian, moved to Italy, and began to write in Italian. Now she has returned to the United States, and she has interesting insights into the writing voice, translation, and languages. To read the entire interview go to https://lithub.com/writing-in-the-interim-language-jhumpa-lahiri-and-chiara-barzini-in-conversation/

Jhumpa Lahiri: I’ll cite the French-Guadeloupéenne writer Maryse Condé who felt the conflicting expectations of writing in French and Créole and eventually said: “I write in Maryse Condé.” She liberated herself from the trap of either/or, and also, given that she is francophone, from the oppressive weight of a colonial language. Condé forged a French language of her own, a French she has interrogated, grappled with, and comes to identify with on her own terms. All writers must forge their own language and liberate themselves in this way. This notion of liberating ourselves from another strain of the binary—that which divides and defines what is native and what is foreign—lies behind what Proust says: that beautiful books are written in a sort of foreign language. Ever since I discovered James Joyce and Virginia Woolf I have been seeking my own language.

We can look at our own rough drafts to notice what is new, what is emerging, and embark on an exploration.  Writing is not just looking, but also a doing.  We bring in our curiosity, our languages (diction and lingo as well), and our eccentricities.  The writing voice is meant to be unique.   

Subtext Books: A Reading

I hope you can join us at Subtext Books in St. Paul, Minnesota on May 27th at 7 pm.  The Minnesota authors who contributed to the book, On An Inland Sea: Writing the Great Lakes will read excerpts of their work. 

A Celebration of Transient Worlds by U.S. Poet Laureate Arthur Sze

Apr 20, 2026 07:15 PM. CST- or 5:15 PM PDT. Free to Attend

Join U.S. Poet Laureate Arthur Sze and host Michael Wiegers as we celebrate the publication of Transient Worlds, Arthur Sze's official Laureate project! This virtual reading and conversation will take you inside the pages and purpose of this landmark collection. Receive a behind-the-scenes look at the making of Transient Worlds; travel the inspirational pathways of meaning between a source poem and its translations; and discover how reading and writing translation can be a new entrance into your own creative writing practice.

Register here for Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_IbWHQhffSCWlJA-T8yiIXQ

League of Minnesota Poets: Thawlight

The 2026 conference of the Minnesota League of Poets took place in Ely, Minnesota on April 10 & 11.  The theme is "Thawlight," a word invented by poet Amanda Bailey to signify the change from the winter cold that put our animals in hibernation and our trees on hold. The season is turning toward spring with melting of ice and snow, greening of fields, leaves emerging on the trees, and songbirds returning. It's like dawn, she said. A creative time.  

I hope my keynote address inspires poets to think of ways to tap into the power of changes, like the way a polliwog transforms into a frog or an egg hatches and the bird starts to fly.  I want to acknowledge and borrow the forces of change, the elements, and the mythic stories, folk tales, fairy tales, and creation stories. I want all of our imaginations and music to flourish.  Poetry plays in all the fields of art and thought, and it can change the world.  

Usual and Impossible

 

TIME’S BODY by Brenda Hillman

—in the middle of the beginning they woke you
from a long sleep;

you could see the edges of the world
being formed, the boundaries
space would make in its eagerness
to be included.

The problem time would have
in its need to be the main thing.

The source of life is not life
but rebellion toward meaning.
When you saw the workers were already busy,

that the list you’d been handed
was usual and impossible

And held it all, and thin
or most, your will
strong as a paper clip

you needed a location
from which to act on your assigned nature

so you chose time:
seed of light,
seed of torment—

About poetry, Hillman writes: 

It is impossible to put boundaries on your words, even if you make a poem. Each word is a maze. So, you are full of desire to make a memorable thing and have the form be very dictated by some way that it has to be. But the poem itself is going to undo that intention. It’s almost like you’re knitting a sweater and something is unraveling it on the other end. – Brenda Hillman

Inspirations: Composing Myself

I write about rivers. My work reflects my landscape, but I would not call my work "nature writing." Instead I am taken by the forces in the landscape, and I find that these propel my poetry. 

This video featuring Anna Thorvaldsdottir, composer, expresses the same impulse. She says this about her inspiration: "sometimes it's the balances and the structural forces and the opposites in nature...."

 

I found a wonderful recording: the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra performing "Before We Fall," a new composition from Ann Thorvaldsdottir. Amazing.  It's just the kind of music I love to listen to while writing.... centered on the cello (it was created for the cellist Johannes Moser), instrumental, and rich with texture and nuances. The Minnesota Orchestra will perform this piece in January 2027. I'm definitely going to be there.

The link below is a video of the performance of "Before We Fall" that premiered at Musikkitalo in Helsinki, Finland. You will glimpse the twisted shape of the organ pipes in this video -- they look like a tangle of branches from a large tree. The organ is not played, but the image of silvery tree limbs speaks of Nordic landscapes.  

Before We Fall:   

https://vimeo.com/1156421110

This feature video of Thorvaldsdottir is available through the Wise Music Group, representing composers and songwriters across the globe.  See more at https://www.youtube.com/@WiseMusicGroup

Ecstatic Poems: Laugh Even When You Lose

Loss is Not Defeat

Poet Coleman Barks passed away recently.  At the University of Georgia English Department, he used to teach literature and creative writing.  A writer of ecstatic poems, he also translated the Sufi poet, Rumi.  The word ecstatic comes from the Greek ekstasis, meaning “to stand outside of oneself.” It is poetry that expresses transcendence or mystical experience.  This was characteristic of the poems written by Barks, as in this excerpt of his poem "Glad."  

In the glory of the gloaming-green soccer
field her team, the Gladiators, is losing

ten to zip. She never loses interest in
the roughhouse one-on-one that comes

every half a minute. She sticks her leg
in danger and comes out the other side running.

...

This poem reflects joy in losing as well as in winning. To read the entire poem by Coleman Barks, go to 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/coleman-barks#tab-poems

Read an excerpt of a  poem by Rumi: 

Your laughter turns the world to paradise.
It tears through me like fire.
It teaches me.
...

Last night, the spirit of dawn came to my room
and gave me a lesson in laughter.
Our blazing roars lit the morning sky.

When I brood like a rain cloud,
laughter flashes through me.
It’s the habit of lightning to laugh through a storm.

Look at the furnace. Look at the stones.
See the glowing red veins?
Gold—laughing in fire, daring you,

“Prove you’re no fake!
Laugh even when you lose.”
...

From Gold (NYRB Classics, 2022) by Rumi. Translated from the Farsi by Haleh Liza Gafori. Copyright © 2022 by Haleh Liza Gafori. 

To read the entire poem and see a lesson plan for teaching this, go to 

poets.org

To read a poem by Coleman Barks, go to 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/coleman-barks#tab-poems

Seared by Memory: Meet the Moment: Writers Speak Out on Feb 26, 2026 at Wussow's Concert Cafe in Duluth, Minnesota

In the Blaney lecture“Not Persuasion, But Transport: The Poetry of Witness” on October 25, 2013, at Poets Forum in New York City. (and archived on Poets.org) Carolyn Forché said,:

I know that poetry begins in a not-knowing rather than a moral impulse. A poet’s consciousness is, in this sense, improvisational and open to transformations, felicitous accidents, and an intuitive response to language-generating meaning and music—that is true whether the spark igniting the poem comes from a word, a phrase, an image, or a moment in experience, present or remembered....

I also know that consciousness can be incised by experience, seared by memory, awakened by what is seen and lived and that the poet’s language also passes through this fire and is marked by it."

I had the pleasure of hosting this event. Thank you to the writers of these great poems & prose featured last week at Meet the Moment. Carter Meland Julie Gard Sara Sowers-Wills Jess Morgan, Anastasia Bamford Ryan Vine Jayson Iwen Liz Minette, Troy Peters, Haley Swann, Patty Fleege, Lexi Clark, Sarah Royer-Stoll, and Claudia Daly. Wussow's Concert Cafe, Zomi Bloom

Here's a sample of songs created in resistance to ICE.

Singing Resistance this winter in Minneapolis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4qXXNnjGHQ

The Streets of Minneapolis: Three Irish Women

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ci_0PAObc4A&list=RDCi_0PAObc4A

The Rise of the North

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uozLlmUhzZY

F**k ICE by Scared Ketchup

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PUOhAJG5EU&list=RD4PUOhAJG5EU

Meet the Moment: Writers Speak Out in Duluth, Minnesota

The Libraries in Helsinki

Spending time in Helsinki....

Rikhardinkadun Kirjasto

Kansalliskirjasto

Kansalliskirjasto

Oodi
 

The UpNorth LitFest in Fosston, Minnesota September 25-26

 Come to the UpNorth LitFest In Fosston, Minnesota at the end of September for these writers workshops and a great community of people who love art and literature.

Register here: https://auroracenterforthearts.org/events/upnorth-litfest

 I'm honored to have an excerpt of my writing in this article about Lake Superior 1975-2025, edited by David Beard of UMD.  

https://openrivers.lib.umn.edu/article/lake-superior-1975-2025/

On An Inland Sea: Writing the Great Lakes

I'm so happy to have some of my writing in this upcoming book! 

On An Inland Sea: Writing the Great Lakes 

edited by Michael Welch

Available for pre-order:  $20.00 

from https://beltpublishing.com/products/on-an-inland-sea

The thirty-two writers in this collection grapple with the vastness of the lakes and the vastness of the experience living alongside them. Gabriel Bump explores how his relationship with Lake Michigan changed after losing a friend. For another writer, the water provided an opportunity to explore a romance that would have been too complicated on land. Come dive for shipwrecks, harvest manoomin, and visit the disappearing ice caves. Witness the chickadees, smelt, and cattails, but also zebra mussels, factory runoff, and algae. Each writer's relationship with the lake is personal and unique, but that relationship to the water is also one shared by so many of us.   

Michael Welch is editor in chief of the Chicago Review of Books. His work was named the winner of the 2024 Salamander Magazine Fiction Prize among other awards and has appeared in Electric Lit, Los Angeles Review of Books, Scientific American, Prairie Schooner, North American Review, and elsewhere. He received his MA in Creative Writing at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. 

Anthology: 6 x 9

This book will be released March 10, 2026.

Writing in the Bog

 

Saturday, August 16, 2025

Writing In the Bog Workshop

Workshop facilitated by Sheila Packa

10:00 am- 3:00 pm Meeting in the Lois King Education Center at the Zim Sax Bog, 8793 Owl Avenue, Toivola, MN 55765 (see directions below). 

Course Fee: $60/non-members (includes a FOSZB membership); $40/FOSZB members and Minnesota Master Naturalists

Activity Rating: 1

Join writer Sheila Packa for this eco-writing workshop at the Sax-Zim Bog. This will be a workshop for writers interested in crafting stories or poems with a strong ecological or environmental emphasis. The bog is a useful metaphor for the creative process, whether you are a beginner or an experienced writer. Sometimes it’s a slog. We have difficulty finding our way. The bog helps us to slow down, and at some point, cross a threshold into a creative flow. The sense of time is altered. We hope you will join us!

This generative workshop will begin with writing about the landscape. It might be the bog or perhaps another place that has marked you. Barry Lopez thought the external landscape greatly affects our psyche, or internal landscape. He says the internal landscape develops as we grow up in or live within a particular place, and our life reflects that its contours and relationships.  Using a variety of guided writing exercises, participants will have time to brainstorm, do a few writing exercises, and have discussion. As your story emerges, we will look at how to let it grow organically. Last, we will review  quick editing tips. At the end of the day, those that would like to share excerpts of their work will have an opportunity to do so.

There is no better time that now to write about landscape and the environment. Whatever you write will make it stronger! 

Sheila Packa, formerly Duluth’s Poet Laureate. All four of her immigrant grandparents settled in Zim, Sax, Toivola, and Forbes in the early 1900s. Her recent books, Night Train Red Dust: Poems of the Iron Range and Surface Displacements. She edited “Migrations,” an anthology of 75 Lake Superior area writers writing about change and transitions. All of these books explore the histories and landscape of northern Minnesota. Sheila has taught Composition and Creative Writing at Lake Superior College and in the community. To learn more about Sheila and her works/style check out her website: https://sheilapacka.com/

Registration is now open!

Head over to our website to register: Writing in the Sax-Zim Bog

or

https://secure.lglforms.com/form_engine/s/n-Knzf_3qFtyb7Gaq6St2g

Map: https://saxzim.org/plan-your-visit/#wcdirections

The Line of Descent

Forrest Gander has a very powerful poem, "Line of Descent."  To say that it is rooted in the landscape is inadequate. Instead I would say that it rises out of and falls into the landscape,  as it captures a moment of immense beauty and wrenching danger.  

Ecopoetry is not nature poetry. It has little connection to the pastoral, but it does honor landscape. Ecopoetry is environmental, which expresses a shift from anthropomorphic to earth-centric perspectives. It aims to shift the consciousness away from human dominion over animals and the earth toward a more comprehensive awareness of the birthing, growing, diminishing and dying world that we participate in. It acknowledges the immensity of our surrounding landscape. It yields an understanding of resilience and fragility as our environment is altered by extraction, contaminants, and unsustainable practices. It gives us the ability to vision survival, renewal, and honoring of the waters, the plants, the animals and birds, the fields and slopes, the stones and the air.  We eat it and we breathe it. Our environment enters, changes, leaves, and still remains in our bodies. 

Forrest Gander was born in the Mojave Desert and lives in California. With degrees in geology and literature, he taught at Harvard University and Brown University. Gander is a translator and the author of many books of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. Besides the Pulitzer Prize, he’s received the Best Translated Book Award and fellowships from the Library of Congress, the Guggenheim, Whiting, and United States Artists Foundations.

In The Creative Independent interview, he says

...in Arkansas, where I lived in a very rural place, if you’re walking with someone down a dirt road with a hump in it, you’re separated, there’s a caesura between you. You’re looking at them, but behind them is a screen of trees, and behind the trees there’s a mountain, and those ways of conversing and seeing I think do affect our language.

Heiddeger has that nice short little book called Conversation on a Country Path where he talks about how walking with someone, you literally are sharing a vision and the pace, and that kind of walking changes if you’re in the city or if you’re in the country. I think an attentiveness to the way that place influences and is a part of human perception is something that we haven’t always taken into account.

There’s the tradition of Sangam poetry in southern India, which means convergence. And one of the two poetries that developed from that, called Akam, is this big body of poetry in which it was considered not only unethical, but really impossible to write about human subjectivity or your feelings without taking into account the world immediately around you, which was influencing you in all sorts of ways that you might not have wanted to admit.

The writing that we need is writing that opens our minds and makes us value the ground beneath our feet.  Ganders' "Line of Descent" creates that moment between a child and his father and life and death in that last line. It suspends us -- we don't know the outcome.  

 

The Crying

Thank you to Finnish musician Emmi Kuitinen for sharing her research and practice. She brought her knowledge of the tradition of laments to the participants of a workshop sponsored by the Finnish American Folk School in April 2025. Ms Kuitinen also has adapted the lament into hauntingly beautiful songs.  

In the past in Karelia, the lament was a necessary ritual. Death was a continuation of life, a journey into the hereafter. It was important to lament, or sing the dirge, to accompany the deceased on their journey, to remind the deceased of their transition. The lament also was intended to prevent the deceased from coming back as a ghost and/or bringing diseases. The itkettäjä is the person who performs the lament. The literal meaning of this word is "the one who makes you cry."  

The lament was not only for deaths. There were wedding laments. These occurred during the engagement period prior to the marriage and sung at the bride's house. Laments were made for conscripts in the military. In Russia, the service in the army lasted from five to twenty years. The mother lamented for her son. Also, there were occasional laments for certain occasions. For instance, to say thank you or to express the loss experienced as a refugee. Many lament-performers of the past would not allow recordings nor would they perform a lament disconnected from death or the serious situation for which it was intended.   

A lament is a crying with the voice, and it is not considered singing. However, it does have a set form. Nothing is said directly -- metaphors are used instead. The melody and rhythm vary, but often the lament has a descending melody characterized by improvisation and variation.  Lament language has some common elements: a free meter, parallelism, alliteration, and the use of diminutives and plurals.   

Many cultures besides Karelian culture had laments. It is an old tradition in the Middle East and in many places across the continents.

People believed if the bride didn't cry at the wedding, she would cry for the rest of her life.  Loss is part of every life, and perhaps the lament is needed in order to hold and release grief. It must be heard by others before we can go forward. A good lament makes the listener cry.  

Here is Mathilde ter Heijne - Lament, Song for Transitions post by Olaf Stueber: 

 https://vimeo.com/87757291?&login=true#_=_

Link to Emmi Kuitinen's music: Surun Synty

Please buy her album!  

The Lament

 The Lament 

Emmi Kuittinen will be leading an online (Zoom) workshop on the Karelian lament form on April 5 & 6, 2025 sponsored by the Finlandia Foundation and the Finnish American Folk School. Register by clicking this link

Poetry has roots in the old traditions of lamentation, and I will be among the participants. 

In this online workshop you will get to know the lament tradition of Karelia and Ingria. Laments were sung in parting situations and in the most important rites of human life, like marriage and death. They were used to convey feelings of grief and yearning, and occasionally even those of gratitude. There were also laments for everyday life situations to relieve sorrow.

 website: https://emmikuittinen.com/surun-synty

Narrative Strategies

At the most basic level, writing begins with a person, a place, or a thing.

Fiction: a story which is an act of imagination. It uses character, point of view, voice, setting, image, and plot. Point of view might be omniscient, third person (or third person limited), second person, or first person. Dialogue reveals character and the character's agenda. Exposition shows a character’s thoughts.

Essay: The word essay refers to a walk, or walkabout. It can be personal or impersonal. It is
intended to inform or enlighten the reader about a topic. Essays might present an argument (and refute other points of view) or it might be an essay of definition, description, cause/effect, classification, or a blend of these. The best essays examine one of life’s unanswerable questions.

Memoir: a slice of life (as opposed to an autobiography). Memoir often takes a more artistic form or pattern. Vivian Gornick distinguishes between a situation and a story, and she recommends
that writer create a narrator that is a truth-teller, not to brag or to communicate that she has a handle on the truth, but rather she or he investigates her or his own motives and actions. The "voice" is unique and compelling. See George Orwell's: "Shooting an Elephant," and James Baldwin's "Notes of a Native Son."

Poetry: can be narrative or simply imagistic, but it is a ‘patterned language.’ It has a sound
pattern (like alliteration, assonance, rhythm, rhyme, or figurative elements (metaphor) or a visual
pattern in its images or form. Paul Valery said the difference between poetry and prose is physiological. It is more connected to breath and oral tradition and sometimes ritual. The language of the poem is memorable, and the white space after line breaks and stanza breaks often are there to guide the breath and pace. The language in a poem is meant to create new meaning each time it is read, but the language of prose is meant to fall away once the meaning is delivered. 

Some poetry is “formal,” meaning it uses an established format like the sonnet which has a prescribed number of stanzas, lines and syllables per line, and the lines are in iambic meter (the heart beat rhythm). There are also other meters (trochaic, anapest, etc) and forms like villanelle, pantoum, ghazal, etc. Blank verse doesn’t have a specified form, line length, rhyme or stanza requirements, but it does iambic meter. Free verse refers to a poem without established patterns. The poet creates his or her own pattern.

Forms

ABC : The alphabet is used as the organizing principle. It’s A-Z. In poetry, it is called an
abecedarium and is a very old form often used for laments.

Advertisement: For example, Ernest Hemingway wrote: “For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.”
Yours can be like a commercial or a personals ad.

The Argument: the writing has a focus to persuade; examine other points of view and their limitations (to refute), and to promote one's idea and provide supports for that idea. See Lydia Davis's short fiction: "Letter to a Funeral Director"

The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction by Ursula Le Guin: a story of novel as a container or carrier bag:
https://stillmoving.org/resources/the-carrier-bag-theory-of-fiction

Curriculum Vitae: Use the form of a resumé for an autobiography. See poet Lisel Mueller’s
“Curriculum Vitae” https://poets.org/poem/curriculum-vitae

Character Sketch: This form was popular during the Progressive Era (early 1900s) and often
used by communistic/socialist publications. It’s a portrait of an individual without necessarily
adding a plot.

Chronology of events: events told in the order these have occurred

Cinematic: list of screen shots, a camera close-up, a camera long-distance view

Collage: assemblage of diverse elements (like “Just Add Water” exercise). Combine images, text
fragments, sensory details, and whatever else you like

Confession: An act of enumerating one’s failings in order to gain forgiveness and
understanding.

Comparison/Contrast: see Natalia Ginzburg: "He and I"

Classification: often used in essay to describe sub-types of a subject

Creation story: how things came to be; the beginning of the universe/world

Definition: explains something using description and classification. It can also use comparison,
contrast, and example.

Description: to provide a strong visual picture

Dream: One piece of advice: Do not end with “and then I woke up.” Let the mystery or dream
logic be.

Epistolary: using the form of a letter (or letters)

Fable: a brief story (usually about animals) that teaches a lesson, fables often use animals as the story's characters

Fairytale: a story might connect to a myth, Biblical story, urban myth, or well known cultural
story (Wizard of Oz, or It’s a Wonderful Life, Elvis)

Fantasy: a storytelling which features magic, the supernatural, or mythical beings; the setting can be past, present or future on earth or alternative universes

Graphic: graphic novels depend on both images & some text

Hybrid form: a combination of narrative forms or any of the modes of telling: a combination of fiction/nonfiction/essay

Instructions or Recipe: A how-to-do something

Inventory or List: Imposing a limitation on a piece of writing can sometimes yield excellent
results. It serves to focus a story, essay, or poem. Lorrie Moore, in her book Self Help, has
several fictional stories based on lists: “The Kids Guide to Divorce” and “How to Talk to Your
Mother.”

Letter: In a letter, a writer often can find an intimate voice, if it is to a friend. For an example of
a letter, see Lydia Davis’ “Letter to a Funeral Parlor.”

Narrative Verse: a story or legend told in poetry form, using line breaks, stanzas, and possibly attention to rhyme and meter

Prose poem: a brief writing that looks like prose (because it doesn't use line/stanza breaks) but often borrows other characteristics of poems: metaphors, images, sound patterns, manipulations of time, or associational leaps

Snapshot: one image, one moment, like a photograph

Travelogue: This describes a trip or journey, and not just the external places (things to see, places to go, foods) but generally, the internal trip or journey of the writer

Vignette: usually a page, a brief story