My poems didn’t tell stories. I became a poet in part because I didn’t want to tell stories. As far as I could tell, stories may enable us to live, but they also trap us, bring us spectacular pain. In their scramble to make sense of nonsensical things, they distort, codify, blame, aggrandize, restrict, omit, betray, mythologize, you name it. This has always struck me as cause for lament, not celebration. As soon as a writer starts talking about the ‘human need for narrative’ of the ‘archaic power of storytelling,’ I usually find myself wanting to bolt out of the auditorium. Otherwise my blood creeps up to my face and begins to boil. – The red parts, autobiography of a trial, Maggie Nelson
Ze beschrijft het moeilijkste van schrijven. Het kunnen leven met die vervorming. Het verraad. De tekortkoming. De poging.