Here’s a snippet from a recent “Brevity” blog post by Anna Vodicka that really resonated with me:
The poetry class did not make me a poet. I wrote a lot of bad poems. But it did turn my attention to the short form—the art of economy and responsibility. With Kinnell’s poem and Wrigley’s words in mind, I thought, “Yes. Prose, it is.”
I plucked a few lines from their stanzas, let them settle responsibly into the new space of a paragraph, and cautiously let prose in. That’s when I heard the sound. It went, “click.”
I am currently working on an experimental essay all about how poetry and literary translation has affected my nonfiction prose writing and pushed me in a, well, experimental direction.
Can’t wait to finish it and (hopefully) find a published home for it. Then I’ll share it here!
I loved Vodicka’s Blog post too! Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
I felt this way this fall during composition class. I love to write but I often felt that “my” writing was not valued as much as “regular” writing. I believe I heard that “click”.