Recently, I responded to a question on Twitter about what I personally find appealing in a poetry collection, what qualities I look for. After pondering the question, I decided that for me, it’s a combination of wanting to feel accompanied by the voice in the poems and wanting to know that the writer is “living the questions,” that there is some vulnerability or something at stake. I think this holds true for all genres, really, for me. I go to essays, fiction, and poetry to feel accompanied by the writer’s (narrator’s/speaker’s) voice in the sense that I look to commune with another interesting human being, one who evinces intelligence and humor. And one who is also in some sense, searching.
Of course, as I write this, I think about all the ways a narrator or speaker can challenge these ideas and still be a voice I want to read. But I do think those are the qualities that make me stick with a piece of writing— that the voice in the writing is interesting and human (and perhaps a bit charming) AND that they are coming up to the edge of some mystery or vulnerable human experience, something we all wonder about. I think about times that, for me, one of those qualities is present and the other is lacking— a charming voice can take me pretty far with a piece of writing, for instance, but if I don’t feel that the writer is showing themselves, risking something, or making themselves vulnerable in some way, it’s hard for me to want to continue. Or in fiction perhaps it’s the characters who are made vulnerable, who are shown at the edges of what we understand as human beings— what it means to experience joy; how we withstand loneliness or tedium; what it means to survive grief.
And the same is true on the other side. Maybe a piece of writing is asking the hard questions and telling a story about something vulnerable, but it isn’t a voice that gives the sense of a living human being I’m interested in learning from. It lacks the glimmers of charm or intelligence or insight that really draw me in …
An example of a piece with the qualities that draw me in is “Visitation” by Beth Ann Fennelly from her collection Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs.
I am drawn in by both the narrative voice and by the way the author is exploring the edge of what we can really understand as human beings. We get a sense of a human being behind the writing and also a writer whose voice we want to follow— the “surprise funeral”; the moment of “I thought, or chose to think …”; the wonderful, heartbreaking turns of the last paragraph. These moments draw us through the piece. We are with the narrative voice throughout. And we are also standing in mystery with the writer, including in that moment at the very end, which is what my poetry teacher Joan Larkin might call an “uncooked bit”— the moment of mystery we are allowed in a poem or flash piece: “I would not be okay for so long that when okay arrived it couldn’t place me. It looked right past the veil of shivering leaves, my long red snout, my gloved paws swiping tears into my little black mouth.”
Here’s one caveat: Don’t let these qualities stop you when you’re drafting. “Am I being charming enough? Am I being vulnerable enough?” Just use the questions as inspiration to dive in, to “go for the jugular,” as Natalie Goldberg wrote in Writing Down the Bones. Related to that, it’s ok if your searching quality has a light touch. I think of a humor writer such as James Thurber. My Life and Hard Times is one of my favorite books, and the vulnerability is there, searching is there, but the questions are something like, “What does it mean that we find ourselves and others and language charming, but also utterly baffling?”
A question about revamping Muse with JPC & A POLL!
I’m in the process of reassessing what I offer in this newsletter. I feel it’s time for a low-key rebranding (as the kids might say). What would be most useful or delightful to you as a reader? If I continued to focus primarily on my Friday (or Saturday) posts about craft and creativity? If those went to every other week and I added “dispatches” from my own life in the form of flash pieces? If I revived Melancholy Moms, perhaps with guest posts? Added more interviews with other writers? Take my poll! Please and thank you. :)
A heads up about fall courses:
Registration ends for the self-guided group class Approaching Mystery: Writing Flash Memoir about Wonder and the Unexplained ends Monday 8/21. It’s a great group if you want to jump in for readings, writing exercises, written lectures, and feedback from peers! It’s also a great deal at $50.
Sunday 8/20 is the last day to get the early bird price in our guided courses from my fellow Creative Nonfiction instructor peers Nancy McCabe and Megan Baxter, The Shapes of Stories, and thorough and creativity-stimulating class on a wide range of approaches to personal essay; and our NEW class on creative research, Writing as Researcher.
Also check out fall generative writing workshops and the completely self-paced course Creativity Jumpstart, which I’ve just put up again under Current Offerings.