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Thanks for this thoughtful post on POV. There, There by Tommy Orange blows open POV and provides a wicked set of examples too.

Write on, J

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Jul 13, 2022Liked by Hurley Winkler

Is there anything less punk than punk rock's desire for hegemonic purity? Also, is there anything more punk rock than that? (I'd say the answer to both questions is no.)

As for POV, one of the nice things about being a poet is that we don't have to get locked into it for long periods of time (unless we're writing an epic, which doesn't happen all that much these days.)

& so far as writing soundtracks go, just the ambient background noise of whatever room I'm in. Anything else intrudes too much on the music of the words.

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I forgot to mention in my post that Emma Straub's novel, This Time Tomorrow, is written in the loveliest close-up third person singular POV, the kind that was so close that I didn't even notice the book wasn't in first person until page 50 or so. I thought it was a wise choice for her to lean toward third person over first because of the time travel element—third person, even when it was as close as it was, gave Straub just enough narrative distance for the protagonist to hop around from her teenage years back to her 40s while maintaining a cohesive voice.

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