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Marianna Marlowe's avatar

I love this: "I have lost the consolation of faith/though not the ambition to worship"

I grew up with a Catholic mother, a Presbyterian then atheist father, attended catechism and 4 years of evangelical missionary school, and this quote really speaks to me.

I find myself looking now to art, to writing, to literature, to nature, for something to worship--to take the place of the --what I now see as childish--myths that shaped my faith growing up.

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Walyullah's avatar

I've just started an online writing residency for 2025 and am trying to figure out what my poetry manuscript is about, what story/s its telling, and what form it should take.

This post's advice is very timely in that the form should fit the story, or the meaning.

Just a few hours ago I thought to myself, maybe I can write this book in a form inspired by my Substack blog. It doesn't have to take the form of a typical poetry collection.

I actually really love this idea of a novel-poem without titles for poems where the narrative is meandering, drifting.

Mine is not a book solely about loss, but I'm quite inspired, I think, by the most recent blog post I've written about the death of my grandmother (on Jan 2nd 2025) which I feel takes this drifitng form that you're speaking to in this post.

What scares me perhaps is the amount of work it would take to turn a manuscript draft that's in a typical poetry collection format and transform it (through re-writing) into a blended form that's part blog, part book, part novel-poem.

Much to think about! Thank you so much for sharing this post, Grant!

I will share it with the rest of the resident group that I'm a part of this year.

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