Author of the 2023 Fool for Poetry Prize-winning chapbook Levis Corner House and Grolier Poetry Prize-winning collection Some Far Country, Partridge Boswell is co-founder of Bookstock Literary Festival and teaches at Vallum Society for Education in Arts & Letters in Montreal. He lives with his family in Vermont and troubadours widely with the poetry/music group Los Lorcas, whose debut release Last Night in America is available on Thunder Ridge Records. His Saguaro Prize-winning chapbook Not Yet a Jedi is also now a thing.
Can you tell us a bit about your relationship with flash? Why it appeals and what frustrates you?
The last thing he wants is to give meteorologists a weather reportâclassify a taxonomy of cloud animals in a kindergarten sky⌠so begins what augurs to be the shortest interview in the history of Splonk. Interloper, greenhorn, imposterâŚall these and more spring to mind as Iâmy self-proclaimed protagonistârarely read or write flash fiction per se. And yet, that âper seâ hinges everything! These bright flashes of lightning we conduct onto the pageâare they poems, stories, testaments, prayers, love letters to the worldâŚwhoâs to say?
A couple years ago on a whim, this poet-outlier submitted his first flash piece and lo, it won an award. I thanked the patron saint of beginnerâs luck and stuck that featherâmore found than fledgedâin my cap, without fully realizing that first foray had lured me to the edge of a dazzling new sea. As I continued to write poems, lyrical and narrative in roughly equal measure, I began to hear whispersâpoems gently insisting theyâd be better off as stories.
To my untrained ear, flash tends to be the length of stories we tell each other in passing. Thereâs something natural and human, almost convivial in that aspect which appeals to me. A poemâs musical form can liberate unexpected ideas and language from prosaic logic and syntax. At the same time, pieces that resist the rigors of form still beg to be told. Uncannily, flash satisfies both freedoms simultaneously in exciting, transformative ways.
Meanwhile, the whispers are growing louder. Our acquaintance barely first name, our inchoate encounters are too happenstantial to engender any frustration. We may not be charging headlong into the surf, but flash and I appear to be wading hand-in-hand into a deeper and lasting friendship.
Fundamentally, for you what makes a flash piece successful?
What sucks me into a poem and holds me there transfixed applies identically to flash fiction. A successful poem or flash is a paragon of open specificity. A superlative piece will conjure a tantalizing mix of summoning and withholdingâinviting me to actively engage in the storyâs unfoldingâin a distinctive voice thatâs unafraid of leaping and wonât shy away from hitting high or low or strange notes that nonetheless need to be heard.
Gobsmacking flash, poems and other short forms named and yet-to-be named burn from the same intense flame that dances with immediacy, experimental improvisation, weird and musical language, and singeing insight. Engagement right out of the gate is key. A natural unfolding both inevitable and surprising, a successful poem/flash must lure or thrust its reader deep into the narrativeâs interior in an almost synaptic span. Whatâs more, for all the prestidigitations of craft, for me honesty and authenticity resonate more deeply. Our stories neednât be nonfiction, but every word of them must be true.
In terms of construction/technique, how is flash fiction different, in your view, from other genres â in particular poetry (including prose poems) and the short story?
As David Byrne reveals at the outset of his classic How Music Works, âcontext largely determines what is writtenâ and ââŚwe unconsciously and instinctively make work to fit preexisting formats.â Contextâas one begins to writeâmay seem irrelevant or beyond a writerâs control. But ultimately, part of our task as writers is to help a storyâwhether spoken, sung or writtenâto find its way home.
Regardless of genre or form, invariably my writing begins with the music of language. Where it goes from there is anyoneâs guess. Form comes laterâsometimes much later. Like many writers of poetry or flash who wrestle with the shackles of form and love to defy boundaries, I may have a specific audience in mind initially, but the venue remains nebulous.
Since I can only view flash not as one immersed in the genre but through the lens of poetry, the sole distinction I dare to draw: music is foundational to poetry as narrative is to flash. Yet even these attributes can blur as voiced imagination eschews edges. The music of flash may be more internal or less audible than a poemâs, but a piece wonât sustain me without it.
As a great deal of contemporary poetry and literary âconversationâ moves away from orality, musicality and formal structures, it isnât surprising that flashâs moment is nigh. For me, the distinction between poetry and flash is primarily a temporal one. Poetry tends to conjure an infinite or absolute instant (Octavio Paz), while flash captures a specific momentary narrative flow. The river metaphor may be apt here. If a poem can be an island in the river or a fish or drop of water or the river itself or even the whole hydrological cycle, a flash story seems to me a section of the river. Whether eddy or rapids, its two most prominent characteristics are immersive focus and steady motion. River, lake, ocean, puddle, cloudâŚitâs all the same vital water. Do I dare proclaim another sweeping generalization? Flash is a narrative poem that resists form, or put another way, prizes flow over form. Otherwise, the elements that make a memorable piece of flash and a memorable narrative poem are identical.
Unlike longer pieces, in flashâor at least my limited exposure to itâthe tension or suspense isnât between developing characters or multiple parallel plotlines, but between an intensified nitty-gritty dynamic of concealment and disclosure. I came across an interview with the poet Stanley Kunitz recently, in which he maintains âPoetry is mythologyâŚthe telling of the stories of the soul in its adventure on this earth.â Flash that rewards me most intimates something of the soulâs adventure.
What flashers do you admire and why? Are there any specific pieces that you found compelling?
Strongly as Iâm compelled to enter âNAâ here and claim ignorance as my superpower (my acquaintance with flashers and their oeuvres too scant to qualify me for singling out heroes), Iâll gladly offer up a few fellow poets who strike me as sublime closet flashers. I love Naomi Shihab Nyeâs narrative poems, âGate A-4â being one of her best. David Kirby is a brilliant, irreverent and wildly funny storyteller who thinks heâs a poet. The virtuosic idiosyncratic work of the poet James Tate is a genre unto itself; some call his surrealism âantipoetryâ when in fact his masterpieces are flash fiction. Likewise, the poet Mary Ruefle defies every boundary known to anthologists. Her recent collection My Private Property is bursting with inimitable flashes of slow lightning not to be missed. And of course Iâd be remiss not to mention Joyce, as Ulysses is riddled with brilliant flash.
Despite their common mother, poetry and flash are neighboring siblings who hardly know each other. Which is a shame because their dogs share the same lawn, along with what blooms there. To that end, Iâve taken the leap and ordered up a couple âbest ofâ flash/micro anthologies. It appears, judging from other Splonk 5 responses, I also need to read more Richard Brautigan.
What flash piece of your own are you most proud of? Where can we read it (if itâs available)?
As flash and I are still firmly in the courtship stage, I can hardly commend the fumblings of first kisses (though they may well prove the most memorable, as kisses do). I suppose the first flash piece I wroteâlong before flash existedâwas a story in middle school. It barely had a plot. The miner came home, ate dinner with his dog, and went to bed alone. Bare bones. But after writing it, I remember sitting at my school desk wondering how a half page of text could conjure an almost sacred space in which observation, if not worship, of the ordinary was suddenly possible.
Awkward and earnest and real, I knew that first kiss wasnât a poem (or was it?), and yet it felt every bit as poetic as the rhymed, metered and âfreeâ verses Iâd been writing. Only later did I come to understand that good, potentially transformative writing doesnât wear or even care about designer labels. As Lorca says,â the duende rises from the soles of the feet.â Sometimes those feet are planted firmly in the earth, othertimes theyâre striding a busy city street, dancing on a mountaintop or dodging waves on a sandy beach.
My flash-at-hand âThe Questionsâ can be found right here in this issue of Splonk. Thanks to the editors for their trust in this work and to you for wading through an outlierâs musings.