Silent Story: One Process for the narrative arc in chapbooks

I was recently asked to write down my advice for chapbook construction. Well, here then is a short discussion of my process in creating a chapbook. I should start by stating my obvious support for a narrative arc in chapbooks. I know many have recently spoken against the narrative arc, but I think it has merit.

I will try to keep this short and sweet. Short is a cinch, but sweet, with all that has been said about the narrative arc in a chapbook ‘round these parts, might be a job not worth wages. I am, for the record, in favor of a narrative arc in chapbooks. My reasoning is not just based upon what I was taught by those who taught me poetry, but what I learned while going through the process several times.

I apologize if you feel as if I am preaching to you, dear reader, or if I come off as talking down to you. Neither is my intent. In the event I do make that impression, I apologize, for I am by far not the most educated poet in these parts, nor am I the most experienced poet around. What I say below is my process. I happen to think it is a pretty good process but that’s as far as it goes. If you don’t agree with it, then ignore everything I say.

First, a narrative arc is more than a hook upon which to hang your poems. Poetry at its very center must remain, as my friend and mentor Dave Lee has said, a participation sport. It is not, as the Moderns would suggest, art for art’s sake. The audience is not superfluous. Poetry must be shared, and in that sharing, a story is the poet’s best bet. As each poem tells a story, it only makes sense that a chapbook consisting of a small suite of poems be more than a gathering of good poems. There must be a reason all of these poems are in one place.

To accomplish a successful narrative arc, I advocate the hidden narrative--- the story only the poet knows. Yes, I think the best way to use the narrative arc is to use it during the writing of poems for a chapbook and then destroy it, revealing only that information you the poet deems absolutely necessary. So construct a narrative just for you. Don’t draft the narrative because that is prose, but always have the entire story in your conscious thought while writing the poems. I think this for several specific reasons.

1. The reader wants a narrative, but if the poet gives too much information by exposing said narrative, the reader will be able to predict what is going to happen. Where is the surprise in a collection of poems if the reader knows what is coming? The poet should make the reader feel as if each poem was a natural fit after or during the reading, not reveal everything ahead of time.

2. By obliquely attacking the subject of the chapbook, we preserve the impact. Every poet knows the best way to kill a poem is to attack the issue head on. Billy Collins discusses this when talking about his poem, “The Death of the Hat,” which is a poem he wrote while trying to come to terms with the death of his father. If he would have written a straight forward elegy, he would risk making the poem come off as weird, overly sentimental. As it is, he was able to use the disappearance of the hat from popular male culture to discuss weightier issues such as the passing of an era, a simpler time, and at the same time, incorporate memories of his father.

3. The poet needs to keep his/her options open. Nothing is worse than one poem saying one thing, and another saying something contradictory. By keeping the narrative hidden from the reader, you can move in and out of the boundaries which confine the short story, getting rid of suspension of disbelief while all the time giving the crowd what it wants---a really great story.

Next, you need to create a narrator for your book. This narrator may be for all intensive purposes, a person very much like you. This goes to answer the age old question of the “I” in your poems. Is the “I” in your poems you or someone else? For my money, the “I” is always someone else. Again, this person may be like you in every regard, but should never actually be you. For both my chapbooks, I created a narrator, who was for all intensive purposes, a clone of me. He was the same age, was from the same small town, and had even done many of the things I had done as a young boy. In fact, many of my family members probably think the narrator was me. After all, I had lent real stories from my family to him, allowed him to speak of real people in my family as if he was me. But he was not me. Many of the things in my chapbook happened and many never did happen. Some were out and out lies my narrator told to make himself look better than he really was. You see, creating a new persona, who can lie within the poems is a freeing experience which allows the poet to write the poems which need to be written, rather than be limited to what really happened or what something really looked like. How boring poems would be if we could not lie! Just because a poem is supposed to ring true does not mean that it cannot be a lie.

Once you have a narrative in place, and a narrator who can relate all of these experiences, start writing the poems which tell the story only you know. You can start with a poem you already had and build on it. Chances are you already have several you can justify slipping into a narrative context. Tell the story you have created by way of poem. It doesn’t matter if you are writing narrative poems or lyrics. The outcome will be a manuscript you find much easier to order and work with. When I wrote my first chapbook, I had written a full half of the poems which would eventually make it into the final draft. When I realized I was writing a chapbook, and I did realize from the beginning I was writing a chapbook instead of a full length collection, I merely followed the steps described above and did what Kelly Russell Agodon advised on her blog a week or so ago--- to write the poems which needed to be written.

I would like to add to that. You should over-write. You should exhaust your means. After, with the help of a trusted mentor, you should winnow the chaff, and bundle tight what remains.