“Safety isn’t guaranteed by where earth is in its turning, god knows she’s learned that, if nothing else.” – Beth Gilstrap, ‘There Is News Along The Ohio River’
Form—who cares about rigid form? Why shouldn’t a novel be in verse? Why shouldn’t a memoir be prose poems? As I’ve said on here before (I think), I’m in the middle of edits for a novel in verse. One question that’s hard to grapple with is why a novel in verse, what are the two forms doing to service each other? You need a better answer than “it’s cool.” Of course, that’s been most of my answer for years. I just think bending genres, and Bending Genres, is neat. Yes, it’s good to be in conversation with the literature that came before you, but form is a construct. Obviously. But a novel doesn’t have to be 400 pages. Poetry doesn’t have to follow meter. Write the book you want to see in the world. I want to read good novels in verse, memoirs in prose poems. So I’m gonna write a good novel in verse. Eventually. Right now, we’re talking about two good books that already exist.
What I’ve Been Reading This Week:
Two books that, well, mess with form. One book I’ve read a couple times before, another book that I bought at AWP and had finished before I even got home. Two books by writers I admire a lot, writers who do punk shit like “be in bands” or “start zines.” Two books that really make me want to write, which is impressive, because one is creative nonfiction, and CNF does not usually inspire that in me. I’m talking, of course, about Dreaming Of You by Melissa Lozada-Oliva and There Is News Along The Ohio River by Beth Gilstrap.
Dreaming Of You by Melissa Lozada-Oliva: this is my third time reading this novel in verse, which should be, like The House On Mango Street, a signal that I am revising my own novel in verse. The more I read this book, the more it reveals itself to me. There’s so much going on, but each character becomes clearer and clearer. This is a ghost story, this increasingly looks like a cautionary tale about Millennial Nostalgia. Hey, maybe Larry Ellison can buy Selena’s back catalogue, too. Have Bari Weiss remaster it, have the AI team at Paramount insert her into Season 2 of Twin Peaks. That’s what people want, right? The 80s and 90s repeating over and over until we’re dead?
Anyway. Thanks to AWP, I’m now flush with a bunch of verse novels, prose poem novels, prose poem memoir, all sorts of hybrid books. So I want to semi-explore how the novel and verse forms are borrowing from each other. There is story here, yet each “chapter” is a poem of 1-3 pages. Sometimes, there are multi-paragraph prose poems. Different characters talk, there is a Melissa Lozada-Oliva narrator and an omniscient narrator, there is a poetic You who is a real character and also a composite of readers. This is a ghostly world, a world with blank space around the margins. A lot happens off-page, and sometimes that’s because the Melissa narrator doesn’t know what’s going on—she doesn’t actually talk to Abraham Quintanilla, but his email tells months of story. The epilogue poems really expand on the universality that can be gained from getting hyper specific, which feels like something a good verse novel needs. That feels close to what I want to get at with my novel in verse: a lyric poem using detailed specificity to gesture at universality, but with each poem forming a plot with identifiable characters.
There Is News Along The Ohio River by Beth Gilstrap: a memoir told in prose—what? Poems? Fragments? Single-page stories? The chapters all begin with “there is news along the Ohio River…,” which is an organizing sentence that always sets a scene. In terms of “how the poetic aspect and memoir aspect inform each other,” I really like this organizing sentence. It lends the feeling of reading a diary of nature walks. Of course, nature walks are often a jumping off point for thoughts.
No, our narrator is not a shore watcher for barges. Our narrator is a woman in her early middle age dealing with the first throes of being separated from her husband, moving 500 miles away from the only life she’s ever known, and figuring out where to go from here. She’s doing a lot of thinking by the river, a lot of observing other people. Don’t mistake her for passive. She plants a garden, the circus comes to town, she has a funeral for a baby bunny. She grows. She speaks with her husband—I won’t spoil exactly how.
Like when I read Carmen Maria Machado’s memoir about a relationship gone sour (for very different reasons), I am suppressing the part of my brain that cares about chisme (sorry, Narrator Melissa). Beth and I have friends in common, we keep almost meeting in person, she runs a punk/goth zine, and she’s a hell of a writer. I want nothing but the best for her, and the acknowledgements page is beautiful. I also want to return to this book, again and again, for its specific kind of melancholy that refuses to give in to hopelessness. I love a short book about knowing your younger years are behind you.
LINKS!
Something to listen to while you browse? It was St. Pat’s this week, so I broke out the Flogging Molly. I don’t remember the last time I listened to Swagger and Drunken Lullabies all the way through, but I did Tuesday, and goddamn those are good records.
- ICE is back in Chicago. Again, they never left, not really, but I’ve seen reports of abductions similar to what was happening in the fall. ICE is also in a lot of other places, like Vermont. Minneapolis is still picking up the pieces. Anyway, here’s Agents of Chaos: Unpacking the Actions of Border Patrol Agents Across the US by the Bellingcat Investigation Team, Drone sightings drove surveillance fears as ICE surged in Minnesota by Jon Collins in MPR News, ICE enforcement action leads to protest, violent clashes outside South Burlington house by Derek Brouwer, Liam Elder-Connors, and Zoe McDonald in Vermont Public, Protestors rally against Western Maryland ICE warehouse by Nathanael Miller in WYPR Baltimore, Reform in reverse at the State’s Attorney’s Office by Pastor Otis Moss and Paletero bells to whistles: Latine creation is an act of resistance in Chicago by Jorge Valdivia in Chicago Reader, Watchdog Agency Can Now Investigate Whether Chicago Police Helped ICE Agents by Francia Garcia Hernandez and First-Ever Recreation Of Anne Frank’s Secret Annex Coming To Chicago by Sabrina Castle in Block Club. Are the Valdivia and Castle pieces directly related to ICE? You tell me.
- ‘AI Is African Intelligence’: The Workers Who Train AI Are Fighting Back by Jason Koebler in 404. Never forget that all of AI is built on exploiting workers in the Global South and their environment (which, it’s all the same environment)
- The environmental cost of datacentres is rising. Is it time to quit AI? by Petra Stock in The Guardian. Short answer: yes.
- Two takeaways from this article: solidarity to the striking Nitehawk workers, and I wish that customers and theaters alike could be normal. Going to see a movie is one of the great experiences. Tickets and concessions should not be prohibitively expensive, and people should not be expecting to be waited upon. Why can’t everyone be normal. Anyway, loved Fair Pay Feels Good In A Place Like This by Jaya Saxena in Defector. A pull quote, because Defector is subscription-based (but worth it!): “I can only answer for myself, but I like seeing things on a big screen, and the way popcorn tastes when I’m not in control of the butter and salt content. I like that I can’t pause the movie, and that being on your phone is (mostly) still frowned upon. I like when everyone in the audience laughs or gasps at the same time, making the feeling bigger for all of us.“
- My dear friend Chloe N. Clark was interviewed by Joy Manning for Cleaver. Check it out because Chloe rocks, and I also want to remind everyone that Chloe’s family home recently burned down. There is a GoFundMe to help her family rebuild. Please help if you can.
What’re you still doing here? Can’t get enough Irish freedom songs?
If you work in the service industry, may you clean up in tips this weekend. We’ll all be free one day. Until then, good luck out there.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris