total pages: 51
number of sections: 0
i've tossed out the section breaks! the table of contents looks odd, but it feels right: an unbroken column of titles. no gaps between the titles. just a column of nouns, adjectives, and verbs, etc.
i am nervous about the change. it's drastic. i've spent years working on an order, and that work always included section breaks. i never once thought about getting rid of the section breaks.
until now.
section breaks weren't working for my manuscript; they were segregating my poems: surreal poems here, border poems there, family poems here. yes, yes, i know that's my fault. i couldn't find a way to cluster the themes/ motifs/ obsessions in my poems into sections that enhanced the reading of the collection. i failed.
once i took out the section breaks something happened: all the walls disappeared: i placed a border poem next a surreal poem and i saw for the first time (!!) the links between the poems. i saw how one poem lead the reader to the next. this happpened again and again.
but in a sense i still have section breaks. i'm using jarring juxtapositions as breaks in my manuscript. by placing a fragment poem right after a family lyric, i'm hoping to rupture the flow, to disrupt the reader's expectations.
i think it's working.
ha. famous last words.
About Me
- Eduardo C. Corral
- Eduardo C. Corral is a CantoMundo fellow. He holds degrees from ASU and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, jubilat, New England Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and Post Road. His work has been honored with a "Discovery"/The Nation award and residencies from The MacDowell Colony and Yaddo. He has served as the Olive B. O'Connor Fellow in Creative Writing at Colgate University and as the Philip Roth Resident in Creative Writing at Bucknell University. He's the interview editor for Boxcar Poetry Review. He won the 2011 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition.
5 comments:
Yay! :-D
Fascinating how that works! It really takes time and it's a total process. Glad you're getting there. Yours is a book I will buy!
Juxtapostion, good. Mix 'em up Eduardo!
i'm glad to hear you decided to ditch the section breaks--some manuscripts just do not call for them. also, categorizing poems by section (subject) is not a good idea. it's much better to find a more organic sequencing from poem to poem. My books all have sections, but I try not to make the sections be about subjects. It's way more subtle than that, or should be. But how very bold of you to do away with them completely!
I'm kinda over section breaks myself...
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