Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Norbert Blei - Poetry Dispatch No. 269

Norbert Blei has a fine article over at Poetry Dispatch entitled The Poetry of Persona and the Divided Self. He writes:

Not every poet finds a reason or need to develop a voice within a voice, another 'persona' if you will, but for sometime a number of poets (Americans in particular) have been getting outside/inside themselves in a way writers of fiction create 'characters' or characters to voice other levels of meaning.

Click Poetry Dispatch No. 269 to read the entire article.

Hmmm...has this technique been used in writing haiku?

3 comments:

Adelaide said...

I don't use another persona for haiku, but I often do this for tanka. Being a writer of fiction, it is easy for me to slip into a fictitious mind. I find haiku too short and immediate to fictionalize, but tanka, being longer, lends itself to imagination.

Area 17 said...

That makes complete sense. Even if a person were to fictionalize haiku I would feel that a golden opportunity to make it part autobiographical part recording an event, or being able to trigger useful memories of a day, would be lost in making fiction haiku.

Yet with tanka, although I prefer to write mine as I do haiku, it makes 'allowable' sense to be able to fully or part fictionalize it as the writer desires.

all my best,

Alan
The With Words Competition 2009

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Unknown said...

I have gotten away with it, or at
least in part, writing a fictional
haiku, but as Alan puts it, it was
either an autobio, or an event, or
even one's beliefs, personal, or
therewise.

Emotionally, haiku takes a lot out
of me, possibly by the way I feel
an image, rather than just observe
and record.

Gene