plays vs poems
Am working today on some final edits for some of the play projects underway and have been thinking about the ways that my plays are differing from other writing exploits. Poetry is something that feels like an interior language in many ways, having been at it since I was fifteen scribbling poems about cats and boys in a blue lock diary. It seems to be where my mind wanders whenever I am conceiving a new project, mostly because it familiar and, whatever style or format the project is leaning towards, I know my way around and through. my lines get longer, shorter, disappear entirely in prose poems, but the methods and codes of writing poetry are much the same, no matter what your line lengths, forms, and the way it sits on the page. Less what you write, especially in my case, where poems get more narrative and story-based, When I was reading through some of the poems in the new book, deciding what to read for a virtual reading I did Monday night, it occurred to me how similar the poems are in their use of language, but the cadence and rhythm of the speech varies a bit segment by segment, from the epistolary poems of the Bluebeard sequence to the long, winding lines of WINGED.
But plays are different,. Even the more "poetic" portions of the Macbeth witches retelling. In most of the plays, the diction is definitely less poetic and more daily-speech. But I am finding that working in something much more spare and conversational is helping to bridge the gap I usually feel when I try to write longer fiction and then end up hating it unless its very wrought and poetic (which doesn't always work in a short story or longer piece of fiction.) The stuff I have written in a fiction vein that I am happy with tends to be sparer vignettes like with THE MIDNIGHT GARDEN or the appropriated scientific/architectural language. THE BONE PALACE that is still taking shape (you can actually get an advance look at these by subbing to my Patreon.) I have half of a smutty novel tucked away. Several horror-ish short stories, but I am never quite as happy with these and have been looking for ways to make them as sparkly to me as writing poems. Plays feel like a nice middle ground for storytelling, and in some cases, can be more poetic in nature (like the Macbeth witches.)
It might just be that compared to longer passages of prose, the play is a bit less room to make a mess, similar to the conciseness of poems. I am less apt to wander into huge blocks of imagery and world-building that are not exactly beneficial to the reader. I still have the thrifting memoir to finish, and that feels very different, maybe because its less dependent on action and story and can be more circular and flowing than the arrow-shot of a plot-line.
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