{"id":2573,"date":"2014-09-28T06:58:40","date_gmt":"2014-09-28T10:58:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=2573"},"modified":"2014-09-28T06:58:40","modified_gmt":"2014-09-28T10:58:40","slug":"ravel-edged-storytelling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=2573","title":{"rendered":"Ravel-Edged Storytelling"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"forest<\/a>

(photo: as0.geograph.org.uk)<\/p><\/div>\n

A walk in the woods of poetry and prose and pleasantly lost in thickets of words.<\/p>\n

The current (subscription only) newsletter from AGNI\u2014Boston University\u2019s well-regarded literary magazine\u2014includes an interview with prize-winning poet and nonfiction writer Rosalie Moffett about \u201cRavel-Edged Storytelling.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Wallace Stegner fellow at Stanford University, Moffett says she mostly considers herself a poet, but believes that the two genres\u2014poetry and nonfiction\u2014\u201cshare a border, and sometimes I look up to find I\u2019ve crossed it.\u201d A work that started out to be one thing takes an unexpected and serendipitous turn to become the other. In reading this month\u2019s submissions to the writer\u2019s workshop I attend, I encountered one 1200-word short story excerpt that seemed to want to become a poem and might have become one, by just changing the line lengths.<\/p>\n

Answering Questions<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Moffett says she writes prose and poetry for the same reason: to answer questions and, most of the time, poems \u201cend up being the best arena for my mind to answer them.\u201d This suggests a mind that ranges freely through a forest of possible answers, where the ambiguity of words can be pulled into service of meaning and intent. Strung together in a particular way, they can be the perfect example of the whole being more than the sum of the parts. That phenomenon is is one function of subtext.<\/p>\n

\"dinner<\/a>

(photo: creative commons generic license)<\/p><\/div>\n

AGNI online offers Moffett\u2019s essay Sidney<\/a>, whose story she says absolutely required \u201cthe ravel-edged\u201d kind of telling offered by prose. Prose also provided a more valid recreation of how she originally heard\u2014or overheard\u2014the family stories, and the stories about Sidney himself, with all their half-bits of information, inferences, and unanswered questions like loose threads in a bag of knitting ravaged by moths or kittens. Prose \u201cputs our stories together in a way they never had the chance to be before people died, got bitter, or went off their rockers.\u201d I urge you to link to it and start reading; you won\u2019t be able to stop!<\/p>\n

And Telling Stories<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

In the essay about Sidney, she talks about how as a child younger than six visiting her grandparents, she got up late in the evening feigning hunger, so she could camp out in the kitchen eating a bowl of cereal and overhearing the adults\u2019 conversation in the next room: \u201cI remember the music of the stories more than their substance. I sensed their pull and power. I wanted, suddenly, nothing more than to have stories to tell, and to sit at that table and tell them.\u201d \u201cSidney\u201d shows she absolutely got her wish.<\/p>\n

I think I resonated with her responses in the interview largely because of the process in the last two weeks, of writing my blog posts, The Rouge Shadow<\/a> and Coming to Amerika<\/a>, based on a longer essay about my father\u2019s immigrant parents. So different from Moffett, who can draw on a deep well of family detail\u2014conversations, rooms she\u2019s spent time in\u2014I know next-to-nothing about my father\u2019s parents. Yet, even from the few stray threads I have, many stories could be woven. To write these essays, I pieced together the backdrop for a plausible narrative from minute clues. Moffett says writing an essay \u201cfeels like the hunt for an answer.\u201d And sometimes the answer is that there is none.<\/p>\n

Further Reading<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Rosalie Moffett\u2019s<\/a> website includes links to some of her poems, including this one<\/a>, \u201cGifts from the 7-11.\u201d<\/p>\n

Agni is the ancient Vedic god of fire and guardian of humankind, a messenger to the other gods. You can find out more about this aptly named literary magazine here<\/a>. And about the god of fire here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Art of Subtext<\/a>, by Charles Baxter– The most eloquent and approachable group of essays on subtext that I\u2019ve found. For only $3.88 used to $10.28 new, you can awaken to new possibilities. Reading it was like seeing, after not seeing.<\/p>\n

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