Speeding Towards Poetry

If in the past we have slouched towards the novel, perhaps we are now speeding towards poetry? We might as well, since where I am, it's National Poetry Month and I am seeing poetry everywhere around me. Rumor even has it that we may start seeing poetry excerpts posted inside buses and trains. That's just good stuff.

But what am I thinking about (right now,) or to use Facebook's words, what am I doing? For one, I am preparing myself for an emotional poetry reading that will feature me tonight, at the 15th Commemoration of the Rwanda Genocide, an event occuring at the University of the Pacific in Stockton.

I am also thinking that the recent upsurge in the interest for the short story may also help poetry: the love for short but rich creative things, that's what it is. It seems fashionable nowadays for publishers to seek short story collections from writers first before giving them contracts for novels.

And a good number of our contemporary short story writers have become celebrities because of the genre. Think of Jhumpa Lahiri, Chimamanda Adichie, Rana Dasgupta, Yiyun Li, and we have just witnessed the arrival of Petina Gappah of Zimbabwe (I'm proud; I'm proud), whose short stories have been described by the UK's Guardian as some of the treats of 2009.

We have Joyce Carol Oates, an accomplished novelist who keeps coming back to the short story; we have the California-based T.C. Boyle who produces pieces of the genre effortlessly. There are many more that I am not going to mention here.

The trend seems to be favoring the short story, and that's where my point is: for a long time readers have rewarded writers for their novels, but now it seems that although the novel still wins, the short story has risen, which then (if my math is right)means that the poem (I hesitate) is rising--we are speeding towards the poem, and soon we may see hightened interest in the genre. For once, we might feel something.

Except if readers only want the poetry found in short stories. Because some stories that grip our hearts are delivered through a poetic style, lyrical, concise, rhythimic. For this and more reasons, I think we might also be speeding (even if we do it slowly) towards poetry.

If I have inspired you to read some poetry, order the collection Forever Let Me Go as a start.

Comments

Anonymous said…
What I see doesn't reflect this. Are you describing a USA or African rise? Very few short stories appear in the UK. Publishers do not want them. The exceptions, of late, would be Adichie and Okri. But they are being sold on the back of novel sales. (And publishers are happy to indulge Okri's increasingly diluted writing).I can't see how the rise of the short story heralds the rise of poetry. They are so different, though writers who don't have the talent to write poetry find the short story to be a way out. Could you explain more?
April 21, 2009 at 2:57 PM
Emmanuel Sigauke said…
Oh, I was just talking about reader interest and sales in the United States, where the interested had died down for a few decades. The connection to poetry was just a wish, that as we make the genre transition, we might remember poetry too...

I don't think all cases of failed poetry lead to short stories, because the short story itself is not an easy genre, although its diluted versions can be published if the come from, as you said, Okri, and, as I say, Joyce Carol Oats, etc.
April 21, 2009 at 3:11 PM
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