14) G.C. Waldrep on relationships,
nostalgia, and cutlery: “I
have been told, often, that I couldn’t write a short story
if my life depended on it. I believe this, and therefore anything
that I write in a short prose form is a prose poem, rather than
flash fiction. I have this hazy idea that the interface between
flash fiction
and the prose poem has something to do with narrative. I am nostalgic
for narrative. I miss it, and wish it would return to my life in
some fresh, nuanced form. But I suspect when and if it does it
will come with a knife, a la Brian Evenson.”
But G.C. (G.? . . . Mr. Waldrep) also writes
(also rightly) in his response that “Writing, then, cannot be non-narrative, either
in the act or in the result (the text).” Between these two
Waldreps is, I think, a reader. Which makes a reader-sandwich on
Waldrep, no matter how you knife it with a Brian. Yes—I can write
a poem that has no narrative. But my mind is constantly making
some even as I write, and they attach better again to the words
when
I go back to read. Yes—narratives happen. When we hear something,
we think about it. It’s how we manage to avoid getting hit
by the bus. On second thought: he got hit by the bus. There is
that defunct old-school plot maxim: the gun you show in the first
act had better go off by the last. What is wonderful about
pp/ff is that the word “gun” should go off in the reader’s
head. What kind of narrative is that?
For one thing, it’s the result of words touching each other
more roughly and rubbing off some extra connotation. More contagion & combustible.
More frottage without the white space and silence. It’s like
riding the subway versus taking a cab. It’s less dear.
And sometimes linebreaks are stupid. Especially
when I’m
on the subway (which won’t shut up). Anyone who says different
is a sucker: bebop is a prose poem. These are modern musics. As
Bin Ramke wrote in DR #2, “the tiny announcements which are
line-ends in ‘standard’ verse [are] sometimes, often,
annoying, arbitrary, and ultimately misleading.” He means
these days. And I mean like a call to the dancefloor you just wouldn’t
dance to. The here & now is a world, not of horses & butterchurns
God bless ‘em, but of cars & stripmalls. In this rhythm
we live in, there is often no need for linebreaks (and sometimes
they need be present to project things everywhere). Yes—we
do still breathe. But not the same. No way.
Bio:
Robert Strong lives north of the Adirondack park. His poems and reviews
can be found in the current issues of Elixir, Boston
Review, and
Denver Quarterly. He is completing a gang of prose poems that is,
so far, 89 Undelineated Theories of Just So Many Moments.
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