I have been recently told that the long narrative poem I wrote would better serve the purpose with me using a first-person voice. Because the third person, the use of the "she" creates a distance between the reader and the protagonist of the poem. There were some other interesting suggestions which this particular reader, a poet herself, made. But what I have been thinking is that, do I really want my readers to identify with the protagonist of the poem? What are the implications of that identification?
If I have to be very straightforward about it, I am trying to create a persona, who is a princess and who is leaving her father's palace to try to create an identity for herself. And this she does, by writing about herself. So, in many ways, I am talking about the relationship between creativity and institutions. How leaving the shadows of the state is an essential act for attaining a certain degree of creative autonomy. Now that process is damn hard! I don't think anyone can undertake that, not to speak of the fact that this very idea of autonomy I am trying to write about here is debatable. Can anyone be fully autonomous? My answer is, no. The struggle to attain autonomy is a continuous one, and hopefully, that's the direction that the other poems in the series are moving towards!
Although I am not totally convinced yet, I am moving towards a decision that I will let the third person stay in there. I don't want my readers to identify lock, stock and barrel with a character who is undertaking something that's clearly damn hard. I want them to feel a certain kind of awe, I want them to feel that distance and I want them to analyze what the protagonist in this poem is doing through a critical distance.
But I need to get back to a revision of the poem, and I will get down to it, once I am in Kolkata. The next few days are going to be too chaotic!
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