I've been thinking a lot about narrative and purpose when it comes to the writing I do, whether it is more prose or verse-like in formatting and appearance. So often narrative seems to be talked about as either/or. Either your verse poetry has a narrative line, or your prose has a poeticness to it, but no one really talks about the kind of thing I like to do, which is narrative, but prose, but also fragmented and written with "poetic" things in mind. The result is it's harder to find people who write the same kinds of things or are doing similar work, who have the same goals in common. One foot in one sphere and the other in another. But then again, as someone who also uses visual art, it's a feeling I am used to, though the boundaries seem much clearer (though with book arts, text installations, etc, maybe it's similarly brackish water.)
I am a story writer more and more, but I use poetry as that vehicle instead of prose. But the poems rarely look poem-ish or maybe even work the same way the poets I see around me do. They do not have a consistent sense of voice or structure. They are serpentine, unreliable, fragmented. They would like frustrate the casual fiction writer, as well as the poet who expects poetry to be other things entirely. And yet I feel I have more in common with fiction writers than I ever have with poets somehow, a fact that becomes more and more clear to me every year. The good thing is in feeling a little isolated I've also been granted a better view of the science and alchemy that goes into how and why I am writing, which is something. (though it makes it harder to find readers, perhaps, in a field where they are already in short supply.)
There is also the frustration of finally having that vision and being really happy with what I am creating and yet feeling like there is less and less of an audience for it-be it everyone being fixed on the flaming dumpster fire of the world or other shinier, flashier things. When I was a baby poet, the things like acceptances and approval sustained me, but take that away, whether it's being ignored by them or choosing to not pursue them, you wander around in the darkness for awhile. That has been how everything so far this decade has felt, like a dark room bumping into things. I once blamed the poetry, but I've learned to be kinder to both the writing and myself. To feel out the darkness by touch. Occasionally you fall down a flight of stairs or wake up with bruises on your shins. But still, you continue.
