Differentiating between first person and autobiography
I’ve come into some interesting discussion on this topic when it comes to poetry. After a reading a teacher at the community college I was attending asked me how the incident resonated with me now, and I was a bit taken aback. Many people view poetry as something entirely personal, as opposed to another form of literature, where the poet takes on the role of narrator instead of tape recorder for their confession. It’s kind of weird. If you write novels then people are pretty willing to accept the first person as a fictional account, but when it comes to poetry, the “I” carries a little more weight. It’s especially weighty when you use personal points to spark your poem. I was lucky enough to have a selection of three poems accepted to the Southern Review, including a piece called Lefsa, which takes a snippet I remember from Christmastime when I was young, of my grandmother making lefsa, and sets that in a fictional narrative, in which everything else has nothing to do with reality, yet, I’m afraid to show the poem to my father’s side of the family, as they’ll recognize the lefsa, and take the poem as autobiographical. I’ve written poems about fictional families and incidents so many times, I don’t even want to think how messed up I’d be if they were all real… or what people may think of me if they’ve just caught my pieces in various journals or a collection. Wow. My consolation is that I think those who take a strong interest in poetry won’t feel cheated when they read my fictional poems.