Category: writing

Comics and Narrative Non-Fiction

A few years ago I illustrated a four-page comic version of a poem by Nate Pritts. To my knowledge there aren’t too many literary comics that tackle the idea of visually representing a poem in comic format. Not that my four pages was ground breaking. It was good exercise for me and provided the kernel of expanding comics into the literary realm.

You’re probably familiar with the publisher of Great Illustrated Classics. However, comics as a whole tends to be marginalized as tights-and-capes adventures at best or adolescent porn at worst.

A couple weeks ago, another comics aficionado presented me with the idea of illustrating concert reviews, interviews, non-fiction narratives and personal memoir. I jumped at the opportunity and began sketching out ideas immediately.

The biggest challenge for me was the limitation of the form. Illustrating a concert review requires a simple plot: I went, I saw, I reviewed. But will anyone read something that simple? I thought about adding a bit of narrative. In other words, tell a story about people who attend a concert; include brief backstory, dramatic tension, climax and conclusion.

Last weekend I began with two pages. The story was simple: my meeting with the other comic aficionado/publisher.

Backstory: artist has been trying to publish his comics for over ten years.

Tension: interviewer loves artist’s work and desires some new samples.

Climax: artist feels intimidated by the task but accepts.

Conclusion: artist begins a new direction in creative communication–comics.

William Matthews on Money

Finished Time and Money last night. A line that keeps rolling around my head is from his poem “Money”:

What’s wrong with money is what’s wrong with love:

it spurns those who need it most for someone
already rolling in it.

On the bus to work this morning I thought about that as I read today’s Times. And again as I waited for a transfer at the bus station. Most people were there to make money—going to work. A peculiar exchange I watched as I read the paper. A man walked up to a seated woman and handed her a folded note and motioned away from the station. She waited until he left her and then she unfolded the note, read it and then lit a cigarette. Over her shoulder, I read a name and a phone number. He held the bus he was waiting for until he realized she wouldn’t follow him. Then bus 20 arrived and she boarded.

Things don’t always follow the path I might have imagined. Like the poem I wrote during Monday night’s writers group. I thought about posting it but it turned out a bit darker than I planned. It was a simple exercise: write about an empty glass.

Even this post didn’t follow the path I intended…

New Writering Group

Monday night I visited a new writers group (new to me anyway) which meets at a local university. After quick introductions, the small group (four of us) got right to work with a writing exercise. We wrote for about a half hour and then read the results of our exercise. Oddly, I didn’t feel out of place like one might expect. So, I read my selection first (thought about posting it here, but it needs a lot of work) and then listened as everyone else read their work. A talented little group… I’m looking forward to returning next Monday (if they’ll have me). It got me thinking about something I read awhile back:

There’s the poet, the audience, and the poet’s… it seems to me that the poems and poets that I love all participate in this tri-axil relationship with the audience, the poet and this third party. In Emily Dickinson, it would be the Master. Rilke’s angels. Lorca’s duende. Whitman’s America. Ginsberg’s mother. With ancient T’ang Dynasty poets it would be the Universe.
–from an interview with Li-Young Lee, American Poet, April 2004

I’m not sure I have a tri-axil writing relationship. I barely know my audience (thanks to all three of you who keep returning day in and day out). But it was nice to be in a group of writers that boldly share their work among each other. I suppose that’s a start, at least.