This morning we had our second lecture/talk of the residency. It was on the length of sentences and how using different sentence lengths can impact your writing in different ways. It was an absolutely incredible talk! I’ve been working primarily with poetry, so I don’t use many sentences in my work (unless I’m writing prose poetry), but since I also write other forms of prose, I found this talk immensely helpful and inspiring.

Towards the end of the talk, we were looking at using/posing questions in our work and how that alters the impact and resonance of a section, and this part of the talk really excited me. I use a lot of questions in my writing because they allow me to point to something I might not have an answer for; maybe it’s something that can’t quite be answered, but the question still lingers in my body, and articulating it, giving voice to it, invites further consideration and inquiry. The leaders of the talk spoke a lot about how, as adults, we’re expected to have answers, but is that even a realistic expectation? I know as an adult, I’m often looking for answers and I don’t like encountering a question that I can’t find an answer for, but now I’m wondering if, perhaps, a question is better/more powerful than an answer?

One of the leaders of this talk mentioned that questions feel more like shared space, while answers feel overshadowed by their own completeness, their finality. I cannot stop thinking about this. I use declarative statements in my poetry a lot, too, and I’m now wondering how these might work in conjunction with questions to lead me/my work/my reader to a deeper understanding of uncertainty? Maybe uncertainty isn’t actually the absence of an answer, but rather the allowance for multiple answers? Maybe nuance and ambiguity, rather than blurring the truth, allow us to distill the multiplicity of truths that exist in a single experience.

For instance, I was filling out my faculty mentor pairing form to choose who I want to work with this semester, and one of the questions was about what risks/fears we might have about our work. One of my fears is wrestling with the contradictory truths/memories about my marriage. Because while it was emotionally abusive for the bulk of its existence, it was not without its tender moments. It was something I struggled with while I was with my ex because the tender moments, the times when he was loving and supportive, made me feel like I couldn’t trust my instincts telling me that he was also neglectful and withholding and deceitful. So I have many memories of pain and suffering alongside others of brief moments of happiness and contentment.

But this is often how abusive relationships work. They’re not necessarily abusive every moment of every day. So in this way, the allowance of ambiguity and contradiction actually point to a truer manifestation of what my marriage was like. Maybe the existence of questions allows room for these examinations, these contradictions, these overlapping and dissecting truths?

Just some thoughts mulling around in my brain today. This residency is giving me so much incredible material to consider as I start working through my creative thesis!