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| Reading a Book James Tissot Fair Use |
Metafiction is a narrative technique and a genre of fiction, wherein a fictional work (novel, film, play, poem, etc.) self-consciously draws attention to being a work of imagination, rather than a work of non-fiction. Metafiction poses critical questions about the relation between fiction and reality, usually by applying irony and self-reflection. As a genre, metafiction is comparable to presentational theatre, which continually reminds the audience that they are viewing a play; metafiction continually reminds the reader to be aware that he or she is reading a fictional work. [Continue reading HERE] It became prominent in the 1960s with the publication of such novels as Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 and Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five.
Instead of making this idea seem very difficult to contemplate, I hope that we can have some fun with it. Take a good look at the means by which we write poetry (and why we do it) and approach it from a slightly different angle. Truth be told, anything goes.