Hi all!
This time I thought I'd write a few notes on the people in my poems and my short fiction. The "I"s and "You"s and "They"s, as they occur.
"I", for instance, is not me. Never.
But...
"I" is also never entirely not me. There is a bit of me in every first person narrator I write, be it in poetry or in short prose. How much there is varies a lot, and in some of my poems there is rather a lot of me, but: Always differentiate between the author and the narrator. They are not the same. (The first person narrator of "Back to the Office", for instance, bears no resemblance to me or anything I would want to be or do. Nevertheless, something of me has gone into creating him.)
The "You"s and "They"s are similar. They are not real people, even if I think of real people while I write them (which I do not necessarily do.) something of the people I think about goes into these characters, so to speak, but so does something of me. And a lot of "I just made it up". Again, to varying degrees. And, since I write them, even if I think of real people, this is always first filtered through my own perception, and then through ,my imagination.
Therefore: Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely blahdi blahdi blah and all that. Also: Hey, all these "characters" are, to a certain extent, space for identification. As you read, put bits of yourself into them, and find your own meaning (which does not even have to be anywhere near mine! Cool, huh?). Thus, they're not just me, and the people I know or meet or make up or pull out of my narrative hat, they're you as well. Creepy, huh? And cool.
So yeah, that's my thoughts about narration and perspective and characters.
Knight-Poet out