There may be yet another more hidden and less conscious anxiety behind the contemporary mistrust of narrative: a claustrophobic fear of submersion or enclosure. Narrative, after all, and other poetries of sustained development, seduce and contain; its feature is the loss of self-consciousness; in the sequential “grip” of narrative, the reader is “swept away,” and loses not consciousness, perhaps, but self-consciousness. The speedy conceptuality which characterizes much contemporary poetry prefers the dance of multiple perspectives to sustained participation. It hesitates to enter a point of view that cannot easily be altered or quickly escaped from. It would prefer to remain skeptical, and in that sense, too, one might say that it prefers knowing to feeling.
Tony Hoagland breaks down contemporary poetry’s mistrust of narrative and meaning. Fear of Narrative and the Skittery Poem of Our Moment, by Tony Hoagland
