Steve Abbott on New Narrative

New Narrative is language conscious but arises out of specific social and political concerns of specific communities. It may be foregrounded as in the work of Luisah Tiesh, Shirely Garzotto, Robert Gluck, and Judy Grahn or more buried as in recent work by Leslie Scalapino and Aaron Shurin. It stresses the enabling role of content in determining form rather than stressing form as independent or separate from its social origins and goals. Wiring which makes political and emotional (as well as linguistic) connections interests me more than writing which does not.

Steve Abbott, Soup Intro , SOUP 2

New Narrative marks an emotional moving forward. What Grahn and her feminist precursors Pat Parker, Alta and Sharon Isabell do in writing, graffitists do in painting: traditional subject/object boundaries blur. New Narrative shatters linearity , proceed by flashes, enigmas, and yields to a florid crying-out-theme of suffering-horror. Unlike the abject, however, which can't go "out" because it has no real self to go out from, New Narrative bridges out in its suffering-horror feature, to a future. Formalisms implode, stagnate. Where New Narrative parts with the older literature of the abject(Celine, Kafka, etc.) , is in its communal and political grounding.

Steve Abbott, Notes on Boundaries, New Narrative SOUP 4