Poet as Novelist (Or Not)
Plot? Not so much. Story? You bet.
This poem is as far as I got on the second novel I tried to write. There were reasons I didn’t get further. Libby Atkins was not one of the reasons. Libby Atkins is a badass who deserves to be the heroine of a bestseller, if I wrote bestsellers. What I write, it turns out, is poems, so she gets to be badass in a poem.
CHARACTER SKETCH
Libby Atkins, pushing forty,
a short woman with nothing small about her:
not her thighs or her eyes,
not her belly or her brains,
not her belly-laugh or her fears,
not the heat in her heart
or the hole in her chest, dark as a cave
when she lies down alone at night;
not her memory,
not her despair.
Libby Atkins, not small,
who lived twenty years before she knew she was short;
who reaches always for size L from the clothes-rack,
who knows that M is usually big enough,
who can’t buy something labeled S,
even when it fits.
Libby Atkins, pushing forty,
who hates to shop for clothes.
Libby Atkins, nothing small about her:
broad in the cheekbones and the knuckles,
wide in the foot, round in the waist
that quivers with giggles and tears;
green eyes deep as lakes,
appetites curious and hungry as wolf-pups,
a voice like a huge old house
with just three rooms open and lived in.
Libby Atkins, nothing small
about her daydreams: the American Book Award,
the passionate and intuitive lover,
the half-acre garden on the edge
of an untamed forest. Nothing small either,
nothing soft or kind, about the demon screamers
who batter her dreams with cries like a reeking wind:
- lazy, flabby, do-nothing coward,
nothing to look at, nothing accomplished,
nothing to hope for.
Nothing small
about Libby, doubled over
after daring to dream too long; nothing small
about her when she stands up straight,
damns the screamers to hell through her tears,
and takes a step forward against the wind.
Libby Atkins, short-but-not-small of bone,
generous of flesh, both the soft and the firm,
broad in the hands and the hips;
breathing deep into her belly when she sits alone in her body,
stopping her breath when someone touches her,
as if a touch were a fawn or a butterfly
that would startle away if it saw you notice.
Libby Atkins, pushing forty,
who sleeps sometimes with a hot-water bottle
between her breasts, in that warm sweet curve
where no child, no lover’s face, has yet been cradled;
who dances salsas in her kitchen,
who sings show tunes in the shower
with a voice that sets the tile walls humming;
who learned years ago to laugh
(also to cry) without making a sound,
whose laughter unsilenced sounds like creekwater in springtime,
or like a shout.
Libby Atkins, not a small woman,
not tall either—this height, no more,
not slender—this shape, not another one,
not (God knows) moderate
in hungers, griefs, or hopes;
not stingy either,
except in trust,
and in praise of herself.
Libby Atkins, a woman pushing forty,
nothing small about her. Nothing meant to be.[You can hear an audio version of the poem using the little widget above the photograph. Recorded on a friend’s computer while I house-sit, so there’s less crackling; same nine-year-old-up-past-her-bedtime voice, however.]
I wrote my first novel sometime last century — a mystery novel, because I love them and because I wanted to write something salable. It had an actual, decently constructed plot (a first for me!); also, though, it was written in prose that skated over the top of what I was asking my characters and my readers to feel and experience. It wasn’t awful, it just wasn’t alive. If it had been someone else’s book I’d have probably read a polite fifty pages or so and then put it down.
Part of the trouble, I realize now, is that I hadn't paid a ton of attention to my main character. Oh, I could describe her looks and name her feelings and talk about her back-story, but she was never entirely real to me. She was a point-of-view at the center of this plot that I’d somehow (actually! me!) come up with … but I didn’t know her well enough to write her more deeply than that.
I started a rewrite, set it aside, eventually started scribbling notes about the protagonist for another novel. Libby became very real to me; I even got to know a fair amount about the pair of recurring main characters in the mystery novels she wrote. (Writes, probably.) What I never got hold of was what should actually happen in a story about Libby. I didn’t have a plot.
I hardly ever do have a plot (once, I’ve had a plot one time); that’s one reason I’m not a novelist. Also, though, nearly all of my poems tell stories. That poem upscreen is overflowing with stories of Libby-in-the-moment, and it soaks the reader in experience and emotion — no skating on the surface. I didn’t get the “What happened next?” part of Libby’s story; I got the “Hey, look” part. It’s not what I thought I wanted at the time, but now I call it a win.
Any time you pay close attention to a landscape or a conversation or a feeling or a cat or a tree or a woman pushing forty, story will declare itself. Plot? Maybe. Story? Count on it.
I resonate so heavy with the novelist vs poet musings. My delusions have written beginnings (middles? Ends?) of novels too many times to count, hoping if I string together enough perfectly crafted sentences, a plot will reveal itself to me. It never does. But alas, we have poetry. And micro fiction. Have you read the work of Diane Williams?
Never read anything like that before, quite something, loaded with energy. Libby has, at exactly the same time, my respect and my sympathy.