Dean Bakopoulos: Baby I’ve Changed, I Swear: Creating Turning Points in Prose & Poetry (January 2012)

Fiction writer Dean Bakopoulos defines a “turning point” as an internal process in a speaker or character that affects the course of the poem or story, and sets into motion what will become the climax, resolution, conclusion, or epiphany. He identifies and considers the internal moments that are seeds of change, leaps towards epiphany, or transformations in stories and poems, including Richard Bausch’s “The Fireman’s Wife,” Junot Diaz’s “Nilda,” Mary Gaitskill’s “Tiny Smiling Daddy,” Reginald McKnight’s “The Kind of Lights That Shines on Texas,” Donald Hall’s “Affirmation,” Franz Wright’s “To Myself,” J. Allyn Rosser’s “As If,” and Richard Hugo’s, “Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg.”