Different types of novels and novellas, according to John Gardner

... And THAT is another way to say "Before you can transcend the rules, you need to know the rules."

Or that "We stand on the shoulders of the giants who came before us."

“But perhaps you would argue that, since you want to be a contemporary poet, you do not want to be too much under the influence of what is old, attaching to the term the idea that old is old hat—out-of-date. You imagine you should surround yourself with the modern only. It is an error. The truly contemporary creative force is something that is built out of the past; but with a difference. Most of what calls itself contemporary is built, whether it knows it or not, out of a desire to be liked. It is created in imitation of what already exists and is already admired. There is, in other words, nothing new about it. To be contemporary is to rise through the stack of the past, like the fire through the mountain. Only a heat so deeply and intelligently born can carry a new idea into the air.”

—Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook

Having copied that over here, it suddenly strikes me that it's a different way of saying what I discovered about the origins of the gods and earlier supernatural beings (like the Titans and the Frost Giants, who came before the gods). They were the forces of nature given human (superhuman) form, and endowed with the appropiate kinds of character traits. In our most primitive beginnings we personified these titanic forces, capable of destroying us on a whim, as gigantic beings made of the forces at who's mercy we live. And then we dreamed more civil, more human figures—the gods—made of the same forces but more like us, and there to protect us from the savage elementals of pure unmediated nature. The gods arrived to help us struggle toward civilization out of the savage cradle of Nature.

“These days many poets live in cities, or at least in suburbs, and the natural world grows ever more distant from our everyday lives. Most people, in fact, live in cities, and therefore most readers are not necessarily very familiar with the natural world. And yet the natural world has always been the great warehouse of symbolic imagery. Poetry is one of the ancient arts, and it began, as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth. Also, it began through the process of seeing, and feeling, and hearing, and smelling, and touching, and then remembering—I mean remembering in words—what these perceptual experiences were like, while trying to describe the endless invisible fears and desires of our inner lives. The poet used the actual, known event or experience to elucidate the inner, invisible experience—or, in other words, the poet used figurative language, relying for those figures on the natural world.”

—Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook

Lyrical Nature Prose

Now I'm finding a particular kind of lyrical prose, starting with Virginia Woolf. I'm already familiar with it in poetry, mostly from the Transcendentalists—it's the poetry of nature, and the worship of it. And now I discover Mary Oliver.

She writes incredible nature poetry, and she wrote a handbook for poets, but what really knocks me out is her book of lyrical essays called Upstream.

• Upstream by Mary Oliver—Read Sample

The Waves by Virginia Woolf is a lyrical novel, and apparently also prose poetry.

• The Waves by Virginia Woolf—Read Sample
  • A semi-successful experiment...

The underneath link is to the first comment, which I agree with. It's dense, powerful stuff, and I need a breather now and then. I need to come up for air, read something more 'normal.' It's exactly what I kept thinking as I was reading.

... and on the Lyrical Novel

"The lyrical novel is the most difficult to talk about. What carries the reader forward is not plot, basically—though the novel may contain, in a disguised form, a sequence of causally related events—but some form of rhythmic repetition; a key image or cluster of images (the ocean, a childhood memory of a swingset, a snow-capped mountain, a forest); a key event or group of events, to which the writer returns repeatedly, then leaves for material that increasingly deepens the meaning of the event or events; or some central idea or cluster of ideas. The form lends itself to psychological narrative, imitating the play of the wandering or dreaming mind (especially the mind troubled by one or more traumatic experiences); and most practitioners of this form of the novel create works with a marked dreamlike quality. The classic example is Finnegan's Wake. A more manageable example is John Hawkes' powerful and mysterious novel The Beetle-Leg, a nightmare story in which the narrative moves with increasing speed and pressure from one to another of a few key images—a beetle-leg-sized crack in the wall of a dam, a motorcycle gang, and so forth."​

John Gardner on the Novella

His take is very similar to what was said in the wiki article, but at one point he goes into more detail. Here's what he has to say:

"A good novella, whatever its structure, has an effect similar to that of the tone poem in music. A good novel on the other hand has an effect more like that of a Beethoven symphony. Let me try to make these analogies a little clearer. [...]

"The chief beauty of a novella is its almost Oriental purity, its elegant tracing of an emotional line. Whereas the short story moves to an "epiphany", as Joyce said—in other words to a climactic revelation or understanding on the part of the central character, or at least of the reader—achieving its effect by fully justifying, through authenticating background, its climactic event or moment, the novella moves through a series of small epihianies or secondary climaxes to a much more firm conclusion. Through the sparest means possible—not through the amassing of the numerous forces that operate in a novel but by following out a single line of thought—the novella reaches an end wherein the world is, at least for the central character, radically changed.

"Nothing can be more perfect or complete than a good novella. When a novel achieves the same glossy perfection—as does Flaubert's Madame Bovary—we may tend to find it dissatisfying, untrue. The "perfect" novel lacks the richness and raggedness of the best long fictions. We need not go into this except to notice that the novella normally treats one character and one important action in his life, a focus that lends itself to neat cutoffs, framing. The novel, on the other hand, makes at least some pretense of imitating the world in all its complexity; we not only look closely at various characters, we hear rumours of distant wars and marriages, we glimpse characters whom, like people on the subway, we will never see again. As a result, too much neatness in a novel kills the novel's fundamental effect."​

Sigh—Ok, most of those aren't at all what I was looking for. There's a little about the structure of the films at times. But I can understand how many of the poetic films I've seen are structured without needing to read about it (and I suspect it's the far better way to approach this). In some cases it's important to understand structuring principles, such as for lyrical writing for instance. I think with juxtaposition there isn't any kind of structure overall, it's simply a matter of comparing and contrasting various characters or places or ideas or times or what-have-you.

I think if you want to use parallelism or mirroring to structure a story you can either do it for the entire story, breaking in the middle and repeating structure the way King Kong did, or you could ignore any kind of overall structure and merely use parallelism or mirroring on a line-by-line or paragraph-by paragraph level or at whatever scale you choose to use it.

But now it occurs to me I need to consider subject matter carefully. Certain kinds of poetic writing call for a very mature, serious handling of very realistic material, with no idealization. I don't think I have any interest in that (or if I did I never knew it. Who knows. what might happen if I try it?)

But originally what I was aiming for was mostly just to add some poetic elements to my regular prose writing, maybe including at the structural level. I suppose the thing to do is play around with it for some time in freewrites and practice scenes etc. It'll be a while before I finish the present stories and can move on to the next projects. I wanted to get a head start on learning about and becoming more familair with the elements of poetry, I know this part will take time to get any good at. It isn't something you launch on as an absolute beginner.

Looking into form/structure for poetic film

First thing I notice on trying the search—immediately there's an embarrassment of riches laid out. Complete opposite of the searches I was attempting for poetic writing.

• The Palgrave Handbook of the Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures
  • It's rather pricey
• Guide to Poetic Documentaries: 4 Examples of Poetic Mode @ MasterClass
• Poeticism in Cinema @ The Artifice
• How to Adapt a Poem Into a Short Film @ Storylosopher
• The Poetics of Film: Four Poets on How Cinema Influences Their Work
• Poetics and Film @ Enjambment, Existence

I'll stop here, but I suspect I could just keep going for as long as I want, without ever finding an end to it.

Vignette and Verse form

Vignette:

• Vignette (literature) @ Wikipedia
• Vignette @ SuperSummary
• What Is a Vignette In Literature @ MasterClass

Verse:

• Verse novel @ Wikipedia
• Best 9 Tips on Plotting a Novel in Verse: Advice from Caroline Starr Rose
• Verse Novel @ Poets.Org

Poetic structure can be (not always of course) fragmented or kaleidoscopic, whereas narrative story structure is linear and progresses through a logical chain of cause and effect to a climax. That mimicks not only the sex act from the perspective of the male, but also the hunting/stalking behavior of a predator, who must focus entirely on the fleeing prey and expend every resource on being faster and outwitting the prey. An active protagonist is like a predator, doing things to other characters, whereas a passive character is like prey, only reacting to what's being done to him/her.

Thinking back to my earliest posts on this blog, the one about slipping out of the social world and into the world of objects/nature/animals. Existing in nature is kaleidoscopic rather than linear. Everything is happening at once, all around. It's a cornucopia of sensory input all around you. Tree branches shifting gently back and forth on the breeze, their shadows sliding gently on the ground and over your body, the stream trickling rhythmically and sparkling, bees and butterflies drifting lazily in every direction. Nothing is linear/progressive about it, until a deer or some beautiful animal appears and catches your eye.

You sit still, hoping not to frighten it, so you can just watch it. This is all very passive by the way. You're absorbing, existing, simply being a part of nature. The feminine gaze, the object appreciating a subject or a numberless number of them all around. But when that deer shows up, suddenly it's a singular object. You subject it to your predatory gaze, you fix it with an eye like an arrow. You forget all about the countless bees and butterflies and the water etc, your vision microscopes down to a single point. and you track it like a hunter's rifle, not with the intent to harm or kill it, only to enjoy it. Now the whole expreince takes on a linear progressive element. There's linear movement across the clearing, slow by stages. You watch one singular subject and you follow it until something breaks the spell. Maybe it sees you, freezes in place, and then bolts. Or maybe you sneeze and it's gone before you open your eyes. Or maybe a coyote comes lurking and creeping, doing what you were doing, but with sinister intent. Not really sinister of course. Is it sinister to feed your pack? Your cubs? It's doing what nature programmed it to do. Just as the deer does when it eats those helpless, harmless leaves or whatever they eat. Life feeds on life.

Then maybe more coyotes enter the clearning, and maybe you now become the subject of their attention. Now you're the prey, and you must flee or die. You've become what a moment ago the deer was to your appreciative eye—a target. A prey animal. In life we all are predator and prey by turns. But in those tranquil moments we don't have to be either. For a timeless time we can sit and just be, simply observe the beauty around us. We flow through these three states continually—pradator, prey, and observer. Active, reactive, and passive.

In a sense of course the predator is also reacting to every tiny move of the prey, even trying to predict them to outsmart it. So yes, we're all reactive (when we're not just observing in tranquil meditation, which even the pradators do when they can). But it's pointless to say 'every character is reactive.' I mean it's true, but it avoids the complexity and life/death game of the hunt. That's when active and passive become vitally important. As primates, we're both predator and prey by turns. We move through both worlds. And sometimes we simply meditate in this kaleidoscopic world. This is the nature of nature, and the nature in us.

Another type of structure I've heard mention of is parallel structure and mirrored structure. So far only as literary/poetic devices and used at a small scale, for sentences, paragraphs, or lines/couplets etc. But of course, like just about any of these devices (as I'm beginning to understand), the idea can be extended to encompass an entire. story. I remember Seven Crowns mentioning parallel structure somewhere, and I said King Kong uses a parallel structure for the whole movie—you can break it in the middle and the second half parallels the first. In each half there's a boat ride to an island, the big monkey fights a big snake on on one island and an elevated train on the other. He seeks the highest ground on both islands, chases down Faye Wray on both, and then there's a fall from the highest ground. It's Faye and her beu on Skull Island, into the water so they survive, but its the Big Guy himself who falls in Manhattan, and the street is a lot harder than the ocean. Plus he didn't climb most of the way down by vine first.

A mirrored structure is like a parallel structure, only everything gets reversed. I've been seeing parallel and mirrored structures in relation to Biblical poetry lately, always on a line or couplet scale, but why couldn't they be used across the entire structure of a poemor story? In fact I think I have seen mirroring used across an entire very short poem.

So now a very intriguing idea strikes.

Think about some literary/poetic devices, and see if they can be extrapolated across the entire structure of a story, rather than just for a few words or a sentence or two.​

This is probably exactly how many of these things were orginally concieved.

Quick detour—it suddenly hit me to look up what narrative structure really means. I've been using the term narrative as the opposite of poetic, I think because they're the two kinds of movies I was contrasting. So I looked it up:

• What Is Narrative Writing?

Ok, so far so good. It means what I thought it meant, a linear story consisting of usually three or more acts etc. Getting really tired, it's 8 in the morning and I haven't slept yet. But I need to get this down even if in super-rough form.

So next I tried "What is non-narrative writing?" I got a bunch of hits, but from a glance it looks like they all say something about idea-based, and often nonfictional writing. I'll look into them more after getting some shuteye.

Then I tried "Alternatives to narrative form?" Again I don't seem to be getting what I'm looking for. No mention so far of any of these more poetic kinds of story structures like Juxtaposition or Lyrical. What I'm searching for is the written equivalent of what's called poetic film. Maybe I'm going about it backwards—maybe I ought to look at a bunch of poetic filmmaking articles and see if I can find mention of the kinds of stories they were based on. I don't know why this is so hard. Maybe I'm making it hard somehow, but I don't know how else to word any of this so a search engine can show me the answers.

What types of stories are like poetic films? I guess it isn't like one category or even a clear group of categories. I do believe all these forms I've been discovering recently count. I just want to know more—like the terms, and where to look to learn more about this stuff. It's literally like squeezing rocks trying to get water out of them. Every once in a while a trembling droplet falls out and then I have a major success like tonight. I found a lot of great stuff, this has advanced my search massively all in one big burst. But even still, there's precious little real information about any of it (that I've been able to find so far). A few brief articles, some of which only mention what I'm looking for in passing, and several of which were just repeating John Gardner's words that I already saw in his book last night. Or linking to my own freaking blog, as if it's now one of the main sources for this info. Sheesh!

Well, when that Lyrical Novel book comes in that will be one of my great sources, like the Transcendental Style in Film book was when I found that one. And I guess, in a way, it's right that this stuff is so hard to learn about. You just have to be really determined and seek out the information over a period of years (or get lucky and hit on the right search terms early on). And to a large extent I think you need to figure out how it works yourself, partly by reverse engineering the poetic films. Yes, if I look into structure for poetic films that should provide much more info about what I call poetic writing.

And I just remembered, when I found the Transcendental Style in Film book, Paul Schrader said he had to write it himself with little to no available sources of info aside from some scraps he could glean here and there. He started out trying to find a book so he could learn about it, and ended up having to write it, because it didn't exist. In a sense I'm doing what he did, though I think in my case the info is out there, doubtless on old book shelves rather than online, but I just haven't been able to find much of it.

Heeey... maaaaybe if I use some of the new search terms I'm aware of now (like juxtapositional novel structure or lyrical novel structure etc) on Archive.Org I can find some books about it?

Wiki entry on Novella

It's a really good article, and I'm getting pretty tired of doing all this 'school' stuff, so I'm stopping here for the night. American Beauty came in today and I'm going to have some bourbon in milk and watch it. Inspired by Rob Ager's recent video analysis of it (I have the full-length one from his site). I had forgotten what a good movie it is, and that the character of Ricky is very Buddhist, which is very close to Stoic. Not seen often in Hollywood movies.

But anyway, here's the link: Novella @ Wikipedia

It agrees to a large extent with some of the things John Gardner said about the novella. He praises it as what seems to be his favorite type of story, with his favorite kind of structure (a single, unbroken action with one POV character). Here's a relvant passage from the article:

"A novella generally features fewer conflicts than a novel, yet more complicated ones than a short story. The conflicts also have more time to develop than in short stories. Novellas may or may not be divided into chapters (good examples of those with chapters are Animal Farm by George Orwell and The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells), and white space is often used to divide the sections, something less common in short stories. Novellas may be intended to be read at a single sitting, like short stories, and thus produce a unitary effect on the reader.[10] According to Warren Cariou, "The novella is generally not as formally experimental as the long story and the novel can be, and it usually lacks the subplots, the multiple points of view, and the generic adaptability that are common in the novel. It is most often concerned with personal and emotional development rather than with the larger social sphere. The novella generally retains something of the unity of impression that is a hallmark of the short story, but it also contains more highly developed characterization and more luxuriant description."
​

Ok. I'm off to drink and watch my movie. Cheers people! Back to school tomorrow.