Okay, I admit it. I once wrote and recorded a full-length country album. I know, I know – it was a foolish thing to do, but it got me thinking about the nature of non-fiction. The album was arranged as timeline – a chronology of mental and emotional events that took place over a period of about six months. Because of this loose, but to me tangible, narrative thread I considered it to be a work of non-fiction – even if the reality depicted was largely internal and done through metaphor, simile, and somewhat fictive imagery.
Over the years we have occasionally received submissions of poetry and dismissed them on the grounds of their not being works of prose and thus inherently not non-fiction. But I think I’d like to challenge that notion. I’d like to posit the theory that poetry and music, and even documentary filmmaking for that matter, might well be non-fiction. So, as an experiment, I’d like to consider such creative works for publication on this site, (at least for the time-being or until the whole thing blows up in my face) so long as they adhere to all other Neighborhood rules.
Getting the ball rolling are two recent pieces from Robert Viscusi and Abigail Frankfurt.
Thanks for reading. Thanks for writing.
All Best,
Connor Gaudet
Managing Editor, MBN
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