Isn’t it Romantic? prose, poetry and magical realism

Friedrich Schlegel courtesy of Wikipedia


Dear friends — I’ve been out of the blogosphere for some time, because of activism and teaching. I’m excited to share that my little book on how to write Magical Realism is coming out in a few weeks. I’ll keep you posted. But along the way, I wanted to share my thoughts about prose versus poetry, because I’ve been talking to alot of writer-friends about those connections.

I write both poetry and prose fiction (as well as occasional nonfiction), and I know alot of folx who write both poetry and prose. At the same time though, I’m in conversations with alot of other writers, where much is made of the difference between prose and poetry. Since I talk to both sets of people, I’m always amused/aghast by/at how much poets fear having to tell a big complicated story while prose writers confess to me that they are often terrified of the complex symbolism in poetry. “Oh my GOD!” one group says about the other group. “HOW do they DO that? It’s impossible.”

It’s a funny situation. But it’s also an unnecessary one.

The fact is that ever since Romanticism (and in Japan and other Asian countries at least, long before that time), the difference between the two types of writing has been challenged.

One of my favorite writers, Friedrich Schlegel says something important in his famous aphorism about Romantic poetry. Here it is in part:


Schlegel goes on to talk about how “Romantic poetry embraces everything that is purely poetic, from the greatest art systems, which contain within them still more systems, all the way down to the sigh, the kiss that a poeticizing child breathes out in an artless song.”

But the main point that interests me is Schlegel’s view of literary genres as becoming hyridized and “melted’ together (like a cheese sandwich!).

How does magical realism fit into this description? Well, I think that magical realism is very much a part of this melting, in that the writing tends to be very lyrical and/or descriptive and what the Romantics would call the “feeling” of the world is at least as important (if not more important) than what actually “happens.”

It’s certainly true that the big difference between a poem and a story is that in the latter, to misquote novelist E.M. Forster, something “has to happen.” But it doesn’t have to be alot. Think of Ryka Aoki, Kathleen Alcala, Haruki Murakami, George Saunders, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and many other writers. Their work feels SO FULL, but alot of it is lyrical description.

Consider this passage:


So, if you’re a poet, try writing a story sometime. If you’re a fiction writer, stop, smell the roses, or the garbage, and write a little about that feeling.

And stay tuned for a prompt using this very Marquez story, from my book on magical realism! It’s coming down the track! 🙂 27710070_10214751244965690_4444200791659801795_o


PS — Friedrich Schegel actually spans the 18th and the 19th Centuries. He’s a great exponent of thinking with beyond the European Enlightenment. Sure, he’s fanciful and bold, but you wouldn’t get him, or Romanticism, without 18th Century writers like Voltaire and Diderot.

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