Q&A with Aberjhani discussion

This is from the very kind Mr. & Ms. J. Wisdom, whom I refer to as J-Wise, and who have been kind enough to include me among the individuals they sometimes blog about in a manner that is not too painful:

“What do you consider yourself to be the most when it comes to writing: a poet or a fiction and nonfiction prose writer?”

I started out writing with the idea that I wanted to be a “literary artist” because that’s what I considered many of my favorite authors to be. Maya Angelou, Margaret Walker, Henry Dumas, Amiri Baraka, Jean Paul Sartre, Khalil Gibran, and quite a few others produced important works in different genres. Some of them were what I call genre-benders, or genre-blenders, because they sometimes blurred the lines between prose and poetry, or between a novel and a play. They employed specific literary formats to make specific statements and that seemed to me like a very powerful thing to do. At this point, however, I mostly think of myself as an all-around author who continues to study his craft while writing as much as I can as well as I can.