against story

Story is what can be taken out of the fiction and made into a movie. Story is what you tell people when they embarrass you by asking what your novel is about. Story is what you do to clean up life and make God into a good burgher who manages the world like a business. History is often written as a story so that it can seem to have a purpose, to be on its way somewhere; because stories deny that life is no more than an endlessly muddled middle; they beg each length of it to have a beginning and end like a ballgame or a banquet. Stories are sneaky justifications.

—William Gass, “Finding a Form,” Finding A Form: Essays (Knopf, 1996)

sum of its parts

A great first line and a fine ending, with all the chutes & ladders lines in between.

after dante

In the middle of the poem which is life I found myself within a dark woods.

after dante

In the middle of making my poem,
I found I was lost in a dark wood.

not random

The middle of the poem was so messed up you believed the poet must have a plan.