
When are you going to write a real book?
"I read your book. That was cool, being published. Are you going to do it with a real book some day?"
"This is a real book. See? Cover, pages, words..."
"You know, like a story."
"Oh, a novel? No. I choose not to write prose. I'm a poet." This is the conversation I've had a few dozen times, mostly with family members or people I've met locally. Oddly enough, never with poets... Now, I could write an academic essay on the narrative tradition and how the novel as