X for Poets: Fiction for Poets with Peter Orner

In this two-hour workshop, we'll look at how studying fiction can animate poetry in surprising ways. I've long been interested, even obsessed, by what fiction writers can learn from poets. I think especially of compression, and the poets can muster with so few words. But what about the other way around? What can poets gain from becoming more steeped in fiction? We'll look in particular at narrative momentum. How does fiction, at its best, and through a whole host of sometimes obvious, sometimes mysterious techniques (and instincts) grab and hold a reader's attention. 

For instance, this is the first sentence of Dennis Cooper's I Wished: “I started writing books about and for my friend George Miles because whenever I would speak about him honestly like I am doing now I felt a complicated agony beneath my words that talking openly can't handle.” So much to say about this line, and in this class I might ask you to pause at that odd phrase “like I am doing now.” The book has only just begun? 

What does a phrase do to our expectations of what's to come? Momentum, expectations. How do they manifest in fiction? This will be our singular focus -- and we'd need a lot more than two hours to do it justice, but it will be a start! Among the writers we'll talk about are Marilynne Robinson, John Edgar Wideman, Penelope Fitzgerald, Dennis Cooper, Lucia Berlin, Italo Calvino, and VIrginia Woolf because I always at some point come home to Virginia Woolf, a fiction writer who has so much to give to any writer, whether they create poetry or prose . . .

*Ticket Price: As we want our events to be accessible to all, our tickets are offered free of charge. Yet if you're able to donate—perhaps $18, or some multiple of 18, which in Jewish tradition signifies wishing long life and good luck to the recipient of the gift—all proceeds will go directly to supporting Yetzirah, making more events like this possible.

** If this fee is a hardship, Yetzirah offers a pay-what-you-can option for workshop participation. No one will be turned away for lack of funds, but please contact Program Coordinator Kyra Lisse at klisse@yetzirahpoets.org if you would like a sliding-scale ticket. 

Yetzirah is a nonprofit organization, and any gift you make is tax-deductible to the extent allowed by the law.