Workshop question, how to break out of the lyric I without sliding into pure documentary - actually worth it

[Undertaker00]

I have been stuck in a project for about eight months where I am trying to write away from the first person lyric without going full documentary or hybrid genre. The lyric I feels exhausted to me right now, but the docupoetry approach of CD Wright or Don Mee Choi requires a research practice I do not have the bandwidth for at this stage of my life.

What is working is shifting to a we voice that is not collective in the political sense but in the relational sense, the way Mary Ruefle uses we in some of the Madness Rack and Honey pieces. Also third person address to inanimate things, ode adjacent but without the celebration. It feels like I am making a hundred small craft moves to escape one big habit.

Curious what other people who have hit this wall have done. Do you push through with the lyric I, do you switch forms, do you let the project sit and write something else, do you read your way out by reading work that does the thing you cannot

[Undertaker92]

The Ruefle move you describe is so specific and I have never seen it articulated that clearly, thank you

[Oscar_57]

Reading your way out is real, I got unstuck on a similar problem by reading nothing but Vallejo for three weeks

[RayOfLight32]

Translation work helped me with this, you write in someone else's voice for a few months and your own gets quieter

[FrostDrifter]

Eight months stuck is not actually that long honestly, my last project took two years before something cracked

[Gareth19]

Try persona poems, full mask, that broke me out of an identical rut in 2022

[Paige_68]

Persona stuff just feels dishonest to me, like I am dodging the problem rather than solving it

[Andy89]

Fair, that is actually well put

[Harbour]

Persona is not dishonest, the lyric I is already a persona we just pretend it is not

[Shannon91]

Have you tried second person, you can be so much more aggressive in that mode without it feeling self indulgent

[Coastal Estuary]

Second person is great until it becomes Lorrie Moore by accident

[Anvil33]

Documentary without the research is just memory writing, which is its own thing and worth trying