Issue 02 / 1994
2 / Poets Writing Prose
The spiritual and literal truth
Contrary to popular belief, poetry is much closer to nonfiction than one might imagine. On the most basic level poems are, in essence, nonfiction—spiritual and literal truth—presented in free-form or verse. In addition, the skills and objectives of the best poets are the skills and objectives most vital in the writing of “fact” pieces.
Poets seem as consistently in control, not only of the structure of essays, but also in scope and range of vision, and the essays collected in Creative Nonfiction #2: “Poets Writing Prose” illustrate just that. Featuring work by Margaret Gibson, Adrienne Rich, Charles Simic, Christopher Buckley, and others.
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FROM THE EDITOR: On “Poets Writing Prose” and Journalists Writing Poetry
In his classic essay about the new journalism, Tom Wolfe maintains that he — along with most other traditional journalists of the 1950s-1970s secretly wished to be novelists. I won’t second-guess Wolfe; some people say that Wolfe has proven himself as a novelist in “Bonfire of the Vanities.”Thou Shalt Not Kill
The musical theme that opened “Boston Blackie” filled the living room. We heard hollow footsteps. Whistling. The silhouette of a man in a raincoat stepped into a dark city street, into a slick puddle of light from an overhead street lamp.How Does a Poet Put Bread on the Table?
But how does a poet put bread on the table? Rarely, if ever, by poetry alone. Of the four lesbian poets at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe about whose lives I know something, one directs an under-funded community arts project, two are untenured college teachers, one an assistant dean of students at a state university.Work-ups—Baseball and the ’50s
By the time I was 2 years old, that is as soon as I could tell a baseball from a beach ball, my father had trained me in the proper batting stance and often would show me off to adults who came over in the evenings.Lost in Translation
Junko, an exchange student, has come from Tokyo to our tiny mountain town in Georgia to live with us for a year.Haworth
Nothing has changed here. Not since I first came. Not since the Brontes themselves walked these streets. Well, of course that’s an exaggeration. Today there are hundreds of tourists pulling themselves up the steep cobblestoned streets.A Different Kind of Two-fisted, Two-breasted Terror: Seymore Krim and Nonfiction
Having recently won a national award for my own creative nonfiction, I wondered what the phrase “creative nonfiction” really meant. The term does not sit well with everyone; some find it pretentious, while others obviously think it ridiculous.Menagerie
In the spring of 1959 or 1960 the alligator arrived. It came in a nondescript cardboard box a little longer than it was wide, of just a size to contain a tiny umbrella or a couple dozen pencils.I Give Up Smiling
Before I went to live in Changchun, China, what I knew of thronged street life derived from a few gyrating days in Manhattan. On Garfield Avenue in my hometown of Des Moines, the only crowd—if it could be called that—gathered on 10 consecutive August nights, drawn by the first booms of fireworks that concluded the grandstand show at the State Fair nearby.The Necessity of Poetry
Wartime childhood, a father’s generosity, and the passing of time: memory fragmentsInterview with Donald Morrill
An interview with Donald Morrill, writer of "I Give Up Smiling"Another interview with Donald Morrill
While in China, poet Donald Morrill kept travel journals, “not really certain what I was going to do with them,” he says. He thought he would use them to write poems, and later did.Interview with Michael Stephens
Michael Stephens’ essay about his old writing teacher, Seymour Krim, developed from a series of notes he was making about two separate topics: Seymour Krim, and the genre of creative nonfiction.The Writing Zone: An interview with Christopher Buckley
What pleases Christopher Buckley most about “Work-Ups” is that he was able to capture the feeling of goodwill that baseball brought to him and his friends during the 1950s.Listening for a Voice: interview with Margaret Gibson
Margaret Gibson wrote her essay, “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” to “record a world that is vanishing,” she says. She wrote the memoir, in which she recalls learning about life and death in her childhood rural home, to hear her own voice-a voice that she says is diminishing daily under the onslaught of commercialism.Interview with Judith Kitchen
As publisher of State Street Press-which produces a well-known poetry-chapbook series-and a literary critic whose bi-annual reviews of new poetry appear in the Georgia Review, poet Kitchen brings to creative nonfiction her experience with poetic stanzas, which she says allows her to shift quickly from one direction to another.