New Poetry I'm reading

I enjoyed Carl Phillip's new book as I discuss here on the KR.
Right now, I'm wending my way through Emily Wilson's Micrographia. Her syntax rivals Hopkins at times (but without the rhyme), and the imagery is like medieval miniature, a marvel of density, precision and patience. Zach Savich's recent book is on my table next, beside Vanishing-Line and Aquarium, two books by Jeffrey Yang. Looking forward to picking through each of these carefully.

Octavia Butler's Fledgling vs. Meyer's Twighlight

Somehow Octavia' Butler's Fledgling came out the same year as Meyer's first Twlight book, but to less acclaim. Butler's book is so much more subtle than Meyer's also compelling book. Butler adds dimensions of race, American history and first person narration that create depth from a quite similar plot line. Why then is Meyer's book more popular? Setting aside (unjustly) the quirks of publishing and timing, I think Meyer simply succeeds in plot where Butler dwells in character. Against Aristotle's advise, Butler privileges one character over plot that comprises many. I plowed through Twilight, skimmed the middle two books in the series, and admired Breaking Dawn. Meyer's characters accumulate momentum between them and drive the book. Butler presents one character, Shori, intimately. This device repeats the basic structure of Butler's earlier Kindred which also took you into the mind of a young women undergoing an unexplained and supernatural transformation. I enjoyed Kindred as I did Fledgling, but I could have put either book down half-way through or two-thirds of the way through with as much satisfaction as at the end. That's because by then I've absorbed the details of the character's peculiar situation and the premise of the novel. Beyond that, Butler's plot is mere footnotes. As a poet, I worry that I will let language enrapture me at the expense of plot. But here is another potential trap: character and premise at the expense of plot. But plot alone makes only the Twilight series and not Woolf's The Waves. I assumed there's something good in between ;) But what is it and how do I write it?

Thoughts on Carl Philips for the KROnline

A few of my longer, more carefully edited thoughts here in a review of Carl Philip's new book, A Dream in Horses.

Epistles and First person narrators

Reading Frankenstein after a few contemporary novels is odd because this book comprises letters and extended first person monologues. Not pages and pages of snappy dialogue that could be film script! (For example, I just finished The Eyre Affair which reads like a movie script; apparently the author wrote them for the industry before turning to novels.) The devices are so transparent. One character meets another and tells him he will tell him his story. Inside that narrative, he meets another character and that character says , "Wait! let me tell you my story." The book does include bits of dialogue and action, but much less than one might expect. I'm a bit envious of the nineteenth century writer... why can't I just tell everything in letter exchanges or long, retrospective first-person narratives? I suppose I could, but I also suppose it would be boring and/or trite.

I realize how little I know about the history of fiction or its progress, despite a few degrees that suggest I ought to. When did dialogue begin to take such prominence? I could tell you about stream of consciousness in Woolf or multiple narrators in Joyce, but I'm not sure about that more simple development.

Shelly's narrator on Past and Future "Natural Science"

“ ‘The ancient teachers of this science, said he, ‘ promised impossibilities, and performed nothing. The modern masters promised very little; they know that metals cannot be transmuted, and that the elixir of life is a chimera. But these philosophers, whose hand seem only made to dabble in dirt, and their eyes to pour over the microscope or crucible, have indeed performed miracles. They penetrate into the recesses of nature, and shew how she works in her hiding places. They ascend into the heavens; they have discovered how the blood circulates, and the nature of the air we breathe. They have acquired new and almost unlimited powers; they can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the earthquake, and even mock the inivisble world with its own shadows.’

“I departed highly pleased with the professor and his lecture, and paid him a visit the same evening.” – Frankenstein