How Poetry Shapes Fiction
Like a football player learning ballet, some skills are best refined on a smaller stage, with intricate and deliberate movements. Fiction and poetry might seem like separate disciplines; one built on expansive storytelling and the other on compression. In poetry we are staring directly at the labored, birthed, & naked craft, yet novelist are frequently told to murder their youngāor darlings1āsomething like that.
So what can poetry offer to to novelist? Turns out, a lotālearning how to write poetry has profoundly shaped my fiction in unexpected ways. Through poetry, Iāve uncovered narrative gems that the strictly prose-writer might not be as intimate with than the experienced poet.
