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

Gorgeous Mistakes: Ocean Vuong's Night Sky With Exit Wounds

Many things are mistaken or have been mistaken for something else in Ocean Vuong's gorgeous and tender book of poems, Night Sky with Exit Wounds.

Vuong came to America as a child, via a refugee camp in Thailand and he ended up there via his family's flight from Saigon when the Americans pulled out of the war.  His art is transfixed upon the image of exit wound which summons the narrative of departures, loss, violence, and war in "Aubade with Burning City," "Trojan," and "Untitled" (after 9/11 and Mark Rothko).  This is met in equal measure with narratives of love and devotion. Vuong explores the father/son connection in "Threshold" "Telemachus," and "The Smallest Measure." 

"Threshold" captures the exquisite balance between light and dark themes: "I didn't know the cost // of entering a song—was to lose/ your way back. // So I entered. So I lost / I lost it all with my eyes// wide open. "

He also writes about lovers and gender-bending. In "Trojan," Vuong writes: "…he steps/into a red dress. A flame caught / in a mirror the width of a coffin. Steel glinting/ in the back of his throat. A flash. A white / asterisk. Look/ how he dances…" This act of courage has the potential to invoke violence too.

Vuong is a master of figurative language. Anne Carson, in her own poem, "What I Think About Most" writes "Aristotle says that metaphor causes the mind to experience itself // in the act of making a mistake." Metaphor transfers meaning between seemingly disparate objects, and it is a delightful experience. In addition, Vuong's sound patterns are resonant. His vowel harmony or assonance is skillful, as well as the alliteration.

His poems in this collection are unified by theme and, in each poem, by the arrangement and rearrangement of the totemic images.  Kate Green, a poetry teacher I've had, used this concept for the recurring images in a book of poems.  Each is a doorway to story.  Each writer has a unique set of totemic images.

These words act as a constellation that will guide you through the work.  Exit wound is of course caused by a gun, but it also a wound his father suffered in Viet Nam, Vuong's self portrait, the stars in the sky, the painful end of love, and light coming through a hole in the wall. It was the final note in JFK's life. As one poem about his grandmother suggests, it is the baby that is born of rape.

He is a poet engaged in a literary conversation with many other stories and writers.  This deepens the meaning and recognizes the canonical works that have inspired him. Allusions are made to the Odyssey, Li-Young Lee, Rilke's "Archaic Torso of Apollo," Orpheus and Eurydice, and Icarus. In the ending poem, "...so what if my feathers are burning / I never asked for flight / Only to feel this fully...."

Not just literature, but Voung evokes music. Notably these are "Of Thee I Sing," from the American anthem, a poem about Jacqueline Kennedy in the convertible when JFK was assassinated and "Always and Forever," a song by Luther Vandross, his father's favorite song. "…Tonight / I wake and mistake the bathwater wrung // from mother's hair for his voice."

Vuong uses many forms of poems: aubade (morning poem), haibun (japanese form of lyric prose followed by a haiku), ekphrasis (a poem conversing with a visual art piece), anaphora (a incantatory pattern of each line beginning with the same word or phrase but with varying line endings), and ode (a poem of honoring or celebration).

From Vuong's book notes, I find two other contemporary poets, both gay men, whose work has influenced his own. "Acquired Immune Deficiency Disorder" by Eduardo Corrall uses the images of a deer, a harp, strings, rain. It's published in Verse Daily at http://www.versedaily.org/acquired.shtml "Parable" by Carl Phillips narrates a story about a saint who could call up a full catch of fish by a gesture of his hand. You can read it here: http://www.nereview.com/vol-35-no-3-2014/carl-phillips/ These poems nearly form a frame for this book.

For navigation, inspiration, and romance, Voung lifts his narrative and lyric work to the stars. He writes"the stars / were always what we knew // they were: the exit wounds/ of every/ misfired word." His narratives connect to meta-narratives, and it's all done with aching beauty. I recommend that you always keep this book.

Event: Poetry Book Club on Jan 9 at 5:30 pm at Zenith Books, facilitated by Sheila Packa https://www.zenithbookstore.com/

Notes: 

• Poem:"Some Day I'll Love Ocean Vuong" (published in the New Yorker and also in this book): https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/05/04/someday-ill-love-ocean-vuong
• Book Review "Ocean Vuong's Night Sky with Exit Wounds: Migration, America and Viet Nam" https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jul/20/night-sky-exit-wounds-ocean-vuong-review
• Biography: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/oct/03/ocean-vuong-forward-prize-vietnam-war-saigon-night-sky-with-exit-wounds
• Essay: "A Mind for Metaphors" by Ann Townsend: https://www.vqronline.org/vqr-symposium/mind-metaphors

Casting More Than One Shadow

Mary Oliver has described poetry as writing that casts more than one shadow.  By this phrase, she refers to the way that poems can yield more than one meaning. Recently, I found a corollary regarding short stories by Ricardo Piglia.

A short story [cuento] always tell two stories [historias].  In the classic short story, there is a visible story that has another secret story embedded inside of it. At the end, the secret story comes to the surface, producing an effect of surprise.  The two stories often operate with two different "systems of casuality."  The key elements function for both the presenting and the secret story.  The modern short story, according to Piglia, "abandons the surprise ending and the closed structure; it works the tension between the two stories without ever resolving it, telling "two stories as if they were one."  

Piglia, Ricardo.  "Theses on the Short Story."  New Left Review 70. 2011.  https://newleftreview.org/II/70/ricardo-piglia-theses-on-the-short-story

Aristotle and Ovid

New work is underway, and I search for new forms. The greatest influences on literature are Aristotle and Ovid.  They offer two different methods of story-telling.

Aristotle in Poetics focused his attention on these elements: plot, character, thought, diction, song, spectacle, and catharsis.  This design usually features a compelling narrative focused on the intense desires of a main character.  Sparknotes contains an analysis of Aristotle's Poetics:

Plot, derived from the word muthos (the root word for myth, Greek) applied to any art form, including music or sculpture. The muthos of a piece of art is its general structure and organization. It means not the sequence of events so much as the logical relationships that exist between events. The best kind of plot of muthos contains surprises, those that fit logically into the sequence of events. The best kinds of surprises are brought about by "peripeteia," or reversal of fortune, and "anagnorisis," or discovery.

In addition, I particularly value the following thoughts from Poetics by Aristotle:

Every word is either current, or strange, or metaphorical, or ornamental,
or newly-coined, or lengthened, or contracted, or altered. 

...the poet should prefer probable impossibilities to improbable possibilities.

...magnitude in the sense of the astronomical...brightness or power...  

On the other hand, Ovid's Metamorphoses has also greatly influenced literature and the arts. Larry A. Brown writes: "...there is no central hero, thus no simple Aristotelian unity to the work. So what binds this poem together, making it more than a random collection of stories? We might first consider three superficial strategies of unity within the poem:

• All of Ovid's tales involve metamorphosis. But some stories (see Phaethon, Pentheus, Heracles) only have metamorphosis tacked on as an incidental element, almost as an afterthought. Ovid is more interested in metamorphosis as a universal principle which explains the nature of the world: Troy falls, Rome rises. Nothing is permanent.
• Chronological progression: Ovid begins his poem with the story of creation and the flood, and ends in his own day with Augustus on the throne. However, chronology becomes unimportant in the vast middle section of work, as seen by the numerous anachronisms throughout (see notes on Callisto, Atlas, Cycnus stories for examples).
• Transitional links: Ovid continually surprises us, as we never know where he's going next. He changes strategies using several techniques

Ovid presents a much more associational form, a theme with variations: "gods acting like humans (section I), to humans suffering at the hands of gods (II), to humans suffering at the hands of humans (III), to humans becoming gods (IV)," according to Brown.

Of the two styles of storytelling, I find myself more often prone to Ovid that Aristotle.  My work has been always focused on changes, including Migrations, the anthology of Lake Superior area writers that I collected.  Poetry is often associational.  But as I work on my new play, I can see the strengths of Aristotle's approach, and so I aim to incorporate structural elements of both.

Work Cited:

Aristotle.  Poetics. Written 350 B.C.E.  (full text) The Internet Classics Archive. MIT.  Web Retrieved http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/poetics.htm

Brown, Larry A. Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Web. Retrieved 16 March 2015. http://larryavisbrown.homestead.com/files/xeno.ovid1.htm 

Philosophy Study Guides. Aristotle. Poetics. 384-322 B.C.   SparkNotes. Web. Retrieved 16 March 2015.  http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/aristotle/section11.rhtml

The Craft that Defies Craftsmanship

Narrative Poetry

Recently, I've compared narrative techniques across genres, from poetry to fiction to essay. What are the basic elements?  A character, an action, a voice.  In a poem, the images and sounds flash and beckon.  In a story the energy, spark and flint, comes from the interaction between two characters. In essays, narration is freed from plot and can enter free-falls of association.  Action frames the essay, but the action occurs on more than one level.  Maybe poetry and essay are more closely related, or maybe the demarcations of all three genres are completely artificial.  

Advice about writing abounds, and yet hardly any formula serves me at my desk. Don't get me wrong, I love to read the rules. These are the first five from Jack Kerouac's Rules for Spontaneous Prose:

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy

2. Submissive to everything, open, listening

3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house

4. Be in love with yr life

5. Something that you feel will find its own form

In these lines are the thrill of driving lines far into the night, accelerating, inebriated, exhausted. Poets also might nod agreement.  And here are five from Kurt Vonnegut:

1.  Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2.  Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3.  Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4.  Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.

5.  Start as close to the end as possible.

Empathy and desire, essential. We can all agree on the sensible nature of this advice. All writers should follow it, but these rules may not work.

Zadie Smith said, "...writing is the craft that defies craftsmanship."  Style, she says, derives from personal necessity. It is how the writer tells the truth.

Kerouac's rules worked for Kerouac, Vonnegut's for Vonnegut.  The rules that work for you will be discovered in the midst of your writing, and may change the next time you sit down to write a new work.

Writers are better without formulas. And yet I will venture my rules:

1.  Images visit and insist. Pay attention.
2.  A rhythm comes. So does the landscape. Wait.
3.  Bring it as far as you can, then push further.
4. Wild distraction may not be irrelevant.
5.  Go back, go deeper, connect.  Find context.
6.  Mine: in the sense of test-drill and excavate.

I like the advice of Zadie Smith.  Seek a "refinement of consciousness," like Aristotle's concept of the education of the emotions.

What rules are yours?

_________________

Find Kerouac and Vonnegut's advice, along with several other writers, at this website:
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/tag/creativity/

Smith, Zadie. "Fail Better." The Guardian. January 13, 2007. c2007. London, UK. Accessed October
       3, 2011.  http://faculty.sunydutchess.edu/oneill/failbetter.htm