Ars Poetica and Other Tales

Hey friends,

At the official end of the summer, I’m thinking about all the books I’ve read recently that blend truth and fiction. Of course, there’s no room in our valuable reporting today in newspapers and magazines for factual errors or deliberate misleading. But, I’m a fan of historical fiction and autofiction, which take real accounts and weave them through a net of story.  Fusing what is true and what can be imagined makes for beautiful, believable writing.

Two of the books I read recently seem like they were swapped at birth – a novel that read like a memoir, and a real story that felt like a carefully crafted tale. With a whale. “Stone Yard Devotional” by Charlotte Wood is a compelling, slow burning novel about a woman who leaves her regular life in Sydney, Australia to live with a group of nuns in the small rural town where she grew up. There’s a mouse plague and a missing sister, and memories from childhood that sound like they came from a long-hidden diary. I truly felt she was there; this was happening to her.

And on the other side – “A Marriage At Sea” by Sophie Elmhirst - is a true story of a married couple, Maurice and Maralyn, who head out to sea. It’s a lovely time until a whale slams into their boat, and they escape to a raft, struggling to survive in the Pacific Ocean. Elmhirst tells the tale using primary sources like Maralyn’s 1973 diary she kept on the raft, and archives of stories during the time. It’s all real – but the pacing, sentence structure and the turtle scene (you’ll know when you get there) are fable-like.

The documentary style of “Good People” by Patmeena Sabit, an on-the-edge-of-your-seat mystery, gives an intimate feel to this novel as characters are interviewed, revealing their thoughts and motivations. It’s about an Afghan family’s tragedy, and feels timeless in its interpersonal descriptions, yet modern with the framing including social media.

And, I just finished “Ars Poeticas,” by Juliana Spahr, a hopeful book about things that seem hopeless. It is a book of poems about writing poetry, in these times of political upheaval, climate change and war. The term Ars Poetica is Latin for “the art of poetry.” Horace wrote a poem called “Ars Poetica” in 19BC, writing that art should “instruct and delight,” which is a great description for books that meld truth and fiction for our times. I love this so much because we all need more beauty in our lives, as we learn and experience.

What are you reading that instructs and delights?

Shannon