By Beth Kephart
Many years in the past, in my first writing workshop, a author amongst us in that previous stone constructing on that hilltop in Spoleto responded to just about each immediate with an inventory. Lists about love. Lists about flowers. Lists containing the seed of a narrative.
They had been at all times very lovely lists.
They had been lyrical, and beautiful.
However they had been lists, and this was my first writing workshop, and I had questions: Was an inventory a narrative? Was an inventory sufficient? Was an inventory taking the simple method out, or was it a higher-order genus of writing, a sort of poem I personally had not mastered?
I needed the positive strains defined. The distinction between a grocery-story checklist and a literary checklist, say. Or the distinction between a guidelines and a poem.
Throughout the years, the questions have hovered. Tracy Ok. Smith’s quick poem “Soulwork,” for instance, is checklist as artwork, as interrogation, as transcendence, however how did she do it? Katie Manning’s “What to Anticipate” is a beloved prose poem that makes use of—not only for its base however for its complete—the fabric lodged within the index of What to Anticipate When You’re Anticipating, in order that it begins:
Anticipate accidents. Anticipate pimples, components, age, and airbags. Anticipate alcohol, allergic reactions, and altitude. Anticipate analgesics. Anticipate animals, ankles, and antidepressants. Anticipate post-mortem findings. Anticipate bathing, bending, botanicals, and breaking information.
“What to Anticipate” is an index checklist, however one thing—what’s that one thing?—makes it infinitely compelling. You learn it, breathless, as much as the very finish. You cease, with Manning, at her yoga and zinc and ask your self what simply occurred.
After which, after all, there’s Pablo Neruda and his Odes to Frequent Issues—a ebook of short-lined odes that always learn like lists of attributes. The stuff of a desk, a chair, an onion. The stuff of socks and scissors. The stuff of a cat:
O little
emperor with out a realm,
conqueror with out a homeland,
diminutive parlor tiger, nuptial
sultan of heavens
roofed in erotic tiles: …
Certainly no laundry checklist, grocery-story checklist, honey-do checklist, guidelines. However an inventory, simply the identical—one filled with energy.
If we are able to grasp the checklist, can we grasp a poem? If we are able to grasp a poem, can we grasp a prose poem, an essay, a memoir, a novel, a piece of unclassifiable hybridity.
I imagine the reply is sure.
In considering the literary checklist throughout the years, I’ve come to some conclusions:
Each literary checklist is conceived round a fulcrum, a factor, in dictionary-speak, “that performs a central or important function.” Consider the fulcrum as an object (that cat) or an concept (soul work) or a catalog (what to anticipate).
Each literary checklist is a factor of elements, every roaring with specificity. Don’t neglect the specificity. Neruda’s cat isn’t some mere tabby with a smooth tail and inexperienced eyes and uncut toenails. Neruda’s cat is, amongst different issues, the very “nuptial/sultan of heavens/roofed in erotic tiles.” Attempt equaling that.
Each literary checklist turns into a cascade, a motion. It appears ironic, does it not, {that a} checklist, a little bit of writing that feels like essentially the most static, going-nowhere factor can turn into (and, certainly, in literature should) turn into symphonic—rhythmic, fluid, rising, falling, gathering a tune inside itself.
It’s going to by no means be sufficient—in literature or in story—to call the attributes of an individual, a second, an period, a factor. We elevate our lists, and the odes that someday include them, by reaching which means, a beforehand unexpected one thing.
There may be pleasure on this course of. We start with what we all know. We extrapolate towards story and which means. After we are alive within the course of—even grateful for it—our readers will be part of us on the journey.
________
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Beth Kephart is the award-winning writer of some forty books, an award-winning instructor, and a paper artist. My Life in Paper: Adventures in Ephemera was a finalist within the 2025 Pattis Household Basis Inventive Arts E book Award. “Be part of Beth on her bestseller Substack, The Hush and the Howl.
Be part of Beth Kephart February 4th for the CRAFT TALKS webinar, Reality, Reminiscence, Creativeness: Connecting the Dots to Uncover Which means in Our Moments, to discover the ability of the literary checklist, in addition to the dot-to-dot train, to uncover the guts of our tales. Discover out extra/register now ($20 early chicken, $30 common).
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