Yes, yes, I know. "Switch hitters" aren't always baseball players. Sometimes they're bisexuals, and I doubt it would even be much of a stretch to use the phrase for double agents in the spy-biz.
But today I'm thinking about writers who seem at home with both poetry and prose: Sherman Alexie, Louise Erdrich, Michael Ondaatje, HD, Doris Lessing, even Stevie Smith. These writers hear two calls and answer both. Or, maybe nothing that profound. Maybe they just like flexing different muscles, playing different games.
I want to think I'm one of them, but when I started down fiction-road I expected that my prose would at least be poetic. Just typing the word "poetic" opens a can of worms (is there such a thing and if so what might it be?) but if you're a poet, maybe you get a feel for what I was expecting. It didn't happen.
Story telling of the straight-forward (historical fiction) kind meant an entirely new kind of writing. For one thing, it did not have to begin with a pen in my hand. That's how I start poems. With the computer I can line up bits of language in a way that "looks like a poem," long before that label is justified, and that scares me. Then there are the gaps I'm at home with in poetry - gaps I depend on. They are usually inappropriate in the stories I tell because at least for now there's a beginning, middle and end connected up in a way anyone can follow.
Even the environs in which I write are genre dependent. For poems I need quiet. And since I need to read each attempt out loud, I need privacy. I write novels in coffee bars (as long as the muzak is bearable and the interruptions limited) and I even find it helpful to desert my home desk and report to the same cafe table for "work."
And size matters. Even long poems are nothing like the tens of thousands of words that make up a novel. In historical novels you can't depend on artistic gesture. You describe it all, both the glory and the stink, creating a dense world and hoping your readers will fall into it.
The challenges and opportunities are also different. Novelists can develop a few characters for several books. That's rare for poets. But even though fiction writers have a bigger audience, poets have a dedicated group of readers who are behind the art before they begin reading. They may extend themselves more ardently, expecting to do a little work to appreciate what the poem has to offer. I do that with poems, but when I pick up a novel I'm hoping most of the work will be the writer's.
So this is a slim slice of a gigantic pie -- there are many variations on "poet" and "novelist," on "poetry and "prose." Right now I'm trying to be both, or at least be both in close tandem. How about you?
But today I'm thinking about writers who seem at home with both poetry and prose: Sherman Alexie, Louise Erdrich, Michael Ondaatje, HD, Doris Lessing, even Stevie Smith. These writers hear two calls and answer both. Or, maybe nothing that profound. Maybe they just like flexing different muscles, playing different games.
I want to think I'm one of them, but when I started down fiction-road I expected that my prose would at least be poetic. Just typing the word "poetic" opens a can of worms (is there such a thing and if so what might it be?) but if you're a poet, maybe you get a feel for what I was expecting. It didn't happen.
Story telling of the straight-forward (historical fiction) kind meant an entirely new kind of writing. For one thing, it did not have to begin with a pen in my hand. That's how I start poems. With the computer I can line up bits of language in a way that "looks like a poem," long before that label is justified, and that scares me. Then there are the gaps I'm at home with in poetry - gaps I depend on. They are usually inappropriate in the stories I tell because at least for now there's a beginning, middle and end connected up in a way anyone can follow.
Even the environs in which I write are genre dependent. For poems I need quiet. And since I need to read each attempt out loud, I need privacy. I write novels in coffee bars (as long as the muzak is bearable and the interruptions limited) and I even find it helpful to desert my home desk and report to the same cafe table for "work."
And size matters. Even long poems are nothing like the tens of thousands of words that make up a novel. In historical novels you can't depend on artistic gesture. You describe it all, both the glory and the stink, creating a dense world and hoping your readers will fall into it.
The challenges and opportunities are also different. Novelists can develop a few characters for several books. That's rare for poets. But even though fiction writers have a bigger audience, poets have a dedicated group of readers who are behind the art before they begin reading. They may extend themselves more ardently, expecting to do a little work to appreciate what the poem has to offer. I do that with poems, but when I pick up a novel I'm hoping most of the work will be the writer's.
So this is a slim slice of a gigantic pie -- there are many variations on "poet" and "novelist," on "poetry and "prose." Right now I'm trying to be both, or at least be both in close tandem. How about you?