Uncover the Hidden Truths of Creativity and Suffering in Alex Boyd’s Latest Essay Collection
Sometimes, as a reader and reviewer, I find myself in a bit of a taxonomic pickle. Often, within one genre there’s a name for some quality or approach that doesn’t easily map to other genres, and this can make talking about form both interesting and messy. As a poet, I’m familiar with the ars poetica, a poem whose very subject is poetry itself.
In ars poetica, a poet turns to face the poem, asking what it is and what it demands. It’s a form with a long tradition, from Horace to every MFA student who has eventually written one as a rite of passage, proof that you have lived with the art of poetry long enough to have opinions about it. I have written my own, and there is something clarifying in the exercise: to make the work your subject is to commit to it in a new way, to stop writing around your understanding of poetry and instead write from within it.
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