Fiction is 25 Years Behind Poetry

"Only when reality is difficult may we tell it apart from that which is designed for the purpose of being easy so that it is never investigated: LIES."

"Poetry keeps language accurate but also does the opposite and slows it down to the point where language is itself and itself is the world.  As such, we must reiterate:  where language is not poetry, poetry cannot be language.  Rather, it must be 'illegitimate', originating in everyday speech but as different from instrumental language as we can bear to understand, or perhaps more than we can bear."  —Josh Stanley 

Order the first issue of this new journal of poetry and poetics, Hot Gun! (here), read it, and then ask yourself why we have no journal comparable for new fiction and the poetics of narrative.  

If, as Brion Gysin said, "Writing is fifty years behind painting," then perhaps prose fiction is twenty-five years behind poetry, at least where it is most thoughtful, innovative, and oppositional.