Why Michael Is Not a Novelist

It may be that what I really need to do in future poems is simply include elements that I have previously left out. One such element is narrative.

A year ago today (in terms of day of the week, at least; technically, it was a year ago Wednesday) I began a summer fiction workshop. I look back on that class fondly. It's nice to just stretch out, creatively, and write page after page of narrative prose. Every now and then, I really think seriously about writing fiction instead of poetry. But I always end up coming back to poetry.

I've concluded that I really have no aptitude for fiction, at least for writing it regularly, because my orientation to life is too far away from the mindset necessary for a fiction writer. Here's the formulation I've come up with as an explanation: Fiction's concern is primarily social; Poetry's is primarily psychic. (This is probably not a new discovery, but I'm slow, so it's new to me.)

That is, most fiction is concerned with social situations, dilemmas, and institutions. Characters have problems with family or other loved ones, or they have class struggles, or whatever. Even if they are trying to determine their identities, they do it in social terms. There is psychological growth and all that, but it's usually expressed in terms of social occurrences. Just today, I spent some time on Amazon.com and the New York Times Books page investigating a contemporary fiction writer who's getting a lot of very good press right now. I really want to share in whatever her fans are experiencing, but she writes in a territory into which I cannot follow. Which is true of most fiction. I admire it, but I can't quite go there.

Poetry, on the other hand, is usually more concerned with the way an individual psyche transforms (or fails to transform) life experience. This experience can be social in origin, but the poem transmutes society into soul. When I read fiction, I often feel a powerful need to find some proof that there's more to life. That this can't be all there is; there must be something more. I guess uncovering that "something more" is why I write, and why I write poems in particular.

Of course, I'm grossly oversimplifying. In truth, there is a lot of overlap. Fiction writers often include some very lyrical passages that have nothing to do with the social world. My favorite fiction writers achieve a lyricism and psychic intensity that rivals that of my favorite poets. And poets regularly write about relationships and other social intrigues. And I'm probably projecting my own situation a bit, since for me the needle points somewhat farther toward the "psychic" side than is true for most people.

But the fact remains that poetry is likely to remain my literary home. So, the thing to do, when I feel the fiction itch, is to infuse my poems with some sort of narrative. Good for my poems, good for me. We'll see how that works.