“ Literature is a textually transmitted disease, normally contracted in childhood. ”
Fiction cannot recite the numbing numbers, but it can be that witness, that memory. A storyteller can attempt to tell the human tale, can make a galaxy out of the chaos, can point to the fact that some people survived even as most people died. And can remind us that the swallows still sing around the smokestacks.
~ Jane Yolen
In fiction, the characters have their own lives. They may start as a gloss on the author’s life, but they move on from there. In poetry, especially confessional poetry but in other poetry as well, the poet is not writing characters so much as emotional truth wrapped in metaphor. Bam! Pow! A shot to the gut.
A book is a wonderful present. Though it may grow worn, it will never grow old.
And at twelve, heading for adulthood, a child fears that the way she is at that moment is all she's ever going to be.
