Narrative
by Derick Varn

There are those of us who struggle with narrative. As poet Lynn Emmanuel once told a group of creative writing students, over a dinner of chicken parmesan, it took her a long time to come to terms with a linear narrative. She told us how she became engrossed with James Joyce and Gertrude Stein because of their abstracting of the traditional idea of the dramatic narrative into explorations of consciousness and non-linear ideas. Emmanuel said that as she was dealing with the death of her father, she was hit in the face with life’s rather linear narrative. She said that body definitely has beginning, a middle, a climax, and an end–deal with it.

A few days ago, I stood over my maternal grandfather’s bed: it smelled stale with urine and sickness. As he raised his atrophied hand, he started laughing for no discernable reason. He slurred some words that gave credit to what a few well-placed stroke can do to one’s mind. As Chunk Palahnuik, Chinua Achebe, and the second law of thermodynamics like to remind us, “things fall apart.” This is the shitty part of a narrative: it ends.

Maybe it’s our cultural fear of death that has let us away from the linear narrative. Maybe it’s any number of things. It is interesting, however, that the academia has been distancing itself from the popular reader trying to avoid traditional narrative and plot. Language-based literature has become the vogue. There is nothing wrong with that if as long as there is some discernable narrative. Things fall apart, as writers, it's our job to put them back together. Language can do that if it has a recognizable structure–something some poets ignore. That’s the why I believe in narratives and narratives are something that even poets should employ.

Derick Varn is a poet and longstanding contributor to Unlikely Stories. Check out his literary works at this site.