‘My Novel’ by Stephanie Cawley

A poem about a novel, which could only exist as a poem. Stephanie Cawley’s poem is the most perfect example of how form is integral to content; form itself makes the content possible, for Cawley’s speculation, this recursive and linguistically idiosyncratic list of possible novel topics could not possibly exist as a novel; we might barely be willing to sit through a short story of ideas for a novel, but by keeping the concept bound in orderly couplets Crawley gives us an efficient lightning flash of wonder to evoke the full crack of thunder. We don’t need to read the novels of cheese sandwiches, death, of hunger love, and absence, we imagine all of it as we read the poem. She writes the poem, and in our mind, we write the novels.

The Boiler