Thoughts of a poet working in West Michigan
posted by greg rappleye at 6:46 AM
I am a writer who lives and works in West Michigan. I am a graduate of Albion College, the University of Michigan Law School, and the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. I have published three full-length collections of poetry: Holding Down the Earth (Sky Books, 1995), A Path Between Houses (University of Wisconsin Press, 2000) which won the Brittingham Prize, and Figured Dark (University of Arkansas Press, 2007), which won the University of Arkansas Press Poetry Series. I have also published three chapbooks: Eros, Psyche and the Death of Narrative (Candle Creek Press, 2006), The Afterlight (WVU-Legal Studies Forum, 2006), and The Divisible Field ( WVU-Legal Studies Forum, 2008), and have completed a fourth manuscript, Tropical Landscape with Ten Hummingbirds. I am working on a novel. My work has received a Pushcart Prize, the Mississippi Review Prize, the Paumanok Poetry Prize, the Greensboro Review Literary Award in Poetry, and the Arts & Letters Prize. I was a Bread Loaf Fellow in 2002. When not writing, I work full-time as corporation counsel for a local government and also teach part-time in the English Department at Hope College in Holland, Michigan.
8 Comments:
I never understand this. Why not just write a novel and call it a novel? Obviously the story itself had some merit. Why try to pass it off as your own? Ugh.
Boooo! I agree with Rachel.
Paul Guest is going to put the cred back in memoirs. I can't wait to read his.
I've never read a memoir OR
any kind of TRUE story I believed
was not a work of the imagination,
and therefore, in large part, factually false. What is it with the obsession WE have with "True Story"? I must admit I haven't picked up a memoir anyway in over 20 years. (Biography, sure--I love 'em, but memoir, naw) Fred Exley's project was the last memoir I probably read, and he called his trilogy
a "Fictional Memoir." I think all these BREAKING news stories about
authors lying are hilarious.
Like everything else in this country we pin a high monetary value on the gritty memoir
such that, for some, the only way
into the market is to fabricate
the "truth." What seems deplorable to me is how shocked everyone constantly acts when this happens. I'll take the "Imagination" over "this really
happened to me!!" any day . . .
But what's so shocking? We use
temptation--fame and riches--to those willing to spill those
beans and then pull this holier than thou crap when a few of them are found out. I think it's just plain lousy. The media and publishing industry should get
a slap in the face as well . . .
Btw., it was good to see you last week, Greg . . .
If it was entirely made up, and if it was that good, why did she have to bill it as a memoir? It's so stupid. Just call it a novel. So stupid.
I do get David's point, too, though. Memoir is kind of a shaky genre, by the very nature of depending so much on memory. I guess I just think like Hannah thinks...it's a good story, call it a good story and move on.
Hey:
Well, I agree with David on this point: Let's call most everything a "meditation" or a "fictional memoir," or a "false memoir" (ala Jim Harrison's "Wolf") and be honest.
The problem I have with this one is that the writer was so insistent upon her truthfulness and authenticity. Not that it much matters to me, but it obviously does to the marketplace.
I agree with David's sentiments, but from a different perspective. I dislike reading anything billed as "true memoir" because the dialogue tends to be so obviously fake (come on, you really remember what you said 20 years ago, and it sounded like written dialogue and not like actual unedited verbal words?) that it stops me from enjoying or believing anything else, no matter how accurate and interesting it may be. If I read the same thing as a novel, I'd be fine with it, though novels need to be more tightly written than most of the memoirs I've encountered.
That dialogue aspect has always
been HUGELY problematic--
true is true. Or is it something else?? I cannot recall
verbatim what I said an hour ago, much less what I was hearing
when I was a youthful "gang member"
or "abuse victim" etc. . .
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