Poet Memoirists

I never took a creative nonfiction writing class, yet I wrote a memoir and now teach creative nonfiction (or, more specifically, memoir writing) at Queens College and for the Vermont College of Fine Arts. It’s actually my favorite writing genre to teach because the stories I come across are rarely disappointing—people are passionate about their pasts, and they have somehow come to terms with this avenue for expression. It’s not poetry with its demand for compression, it’s not fiction with its propensity for fabrication, it is memoir—flawed memory and the interpretation of truth.

Writers who find their way to the memoir crave the space of prose, but also the imagery, language and sometimes the elliptical structure of the poem. Maybe this is the reason some of my favorite memoirs have been written by poets—writers who can navigate through this spectrum, who are at home in the reconstruction of dialogue and in the conversation with tropes.
Perhaps one of the most successful contemporary poet memoirists is Mark Doty. Heaven’s Coast, which recounts the story about the life and loss of his lover to AIDS, continues to be the more popular of his three titles. Firebird is Doty’s childhood memoir, and Dog Years, published this year, is a narrative in praise of the canine and how this companion becomes more than a pet to someone who’s struggling through personal traumas.
A few years ago, Richard Hoffman’s Half the House was reissued a decade after it first made its appearance in 1995. I remember clearly the waves it made because among the many revelations in this book, the one that pointed to a certain pedophile baseball coach prompted other victims to come forward, which led to an arrest. I have no idea what came of that, nor do I think it matters. The book was not written to indict, but rather to illuminate, uncover, and reflect.
Another must-have is Gregory Orr’s The Blessing, a sad and shocking story about how Orr accidentally shot and killed his brother in a hunting accident, and how that defining moment haunted every step of his path toward adulthood. Though this volume is slim it actually packs plenty of compelling material.
But if these books are a bit too heavy for your taste, then try Paisley Rekdal’s The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee. Even the title promises a chuckle and the book doesn’t disappoint—it’s a witty but bittersweet account of a biracial woman trying to find her footing in the world. The book is aptly subtitled: Observations on Not Fitting In.
And of course, I’d like to add my two favorite Chicano poet memoirs: Pat Mora’s House of Houses, with its nostalgic look back at the El Paso, Texas of the 1950s and Alberto Ríos’ Capirotada: A Nogales Memoir, about his childhood along the Arizona/Chihuahua international border.
When I teach memoir (or the personal essay), I keep positioning this genre between prose fiction and poetry. This large gray area in between the other two is expansive and only shows how vast and versatile the narrative possibilities for creative nonfiction can be.
And it’s interesting to me how writers who write both poetry and prose usually don’t allow the subject matter to do double duty—there might be tangential connections, but little overlap. It’s rather a useless exercise to try to compare the poet memoirist’s distinct writing styles, but interesting to note how his or her prose is influenced by his or her poetic sensibilities: Orr and Ríos wrote their memoirs in succinct imagistic vignettes, Rekdal and Mora in episodic event-driven chapters, and Doty and Hoffman weave multiple intricate and reflective threads into their complex storytelling.
But in the end, apples and oranges. All I can say is that the memoirs are just as rewarding as the poems.
Since I’ll be teaching the memoir in the summer, I’m wondering what other poets out there have to offer in the form of this kissing cousin genre. Any reading suggestions?