Patricia Hampl on Memory
In an essay whose title I know I have somewhere, Patricia Hampl says memoir as now practiced has its roots in poetry. She writes that “...the chaotic lyric impulse, not the smooth drive of plot, is the engine of memory. Flashes of half-forgotten moments flare up from their recesses…shards glinting in the dust. These are the materials of memoir, details that refuse to stay buried, demand habitation. They may be domesticated into a story, but the passion that begat them as images belongs to the wild night of poetry.”
More unexpected connections, revelations. I feel like everything of late is steering me away from linear narrative and toward the poetic. Next week, I start the Prose Poem course through Writers on the Net as well. Interesting, after so many years struggling and frustrated with short stories and the conventions of narrative fiction in general.; Of course, that said, I really feel like I don't at all know what I'm doing with poetry. But maybe that's the point -- if you are a poet, you don't need to study or learn anything. That there's an intuitive river of sound and meter and form that runs through you and you simply need to be open to paying attention to it.
In an essay whose title I know I have somewhere, Patricia Hampl says memoir as now practiced has its roots in poetry. She writes that “...the chaotic lyric impulse, not the smooth drive of plot, is the engine of memory. Flashes of half-forgotten moments flare up from their recesses…shards glinting in the dust. These are the materials of memoir, details that refuse to stay buried, demand habitation. They may be domesticated into a story, but the passion that begat them as images belongs to the wild night of poetry.”
More unexpected connections, revelations. I feel like everything of late is steering me away from linear narrative and toward the poetic. Next week, I start the Prose Poem course through Writers on the Net as well. Interesting, after so many years struggling and frustrated with short stories and the conventions of narrative fiction in general.; Of course, that said, I really feel like I don't at all know what I'm doing with poetry. But maybe that's the point -- if you are a poet, you don't need to study or learn anything. That there's an intuitive river of sound and meter and form that runs through you and you simply need to be open to paying attention to it.
