On June 3rd, I’m going to moderate a panel for Passaic
County Community College Poetry Center's “Celebrating the Poetic Legacy of Whitman, Williams, and Ginsberg: A Literary Festival and Conference.” (Click on the title for more information.) Our topic will be “The
Narrative Tradition in Poetry.” We’ll look at the history of narrative poetry
and discuss various aspects of the form, along with its relationship to lyric
poetry and its future. It's quite an honor to be included in this festival and conference (after submitting a proposal for competitive vetting many months ago). I'm also delighted to have an opportunity to work with a group of distinguishes panelists—poets whom you've met here on the blog: Laura Boss, Diane Lockward, Edwin Romond, Joe Weil, and Michael T. Young. (Click on their names to visit these poets online.)
This prompt will take a look at narrative poetry and offer some suggestions
and tips for writing a narrative poem of your own.
If you’ve heard of Beowulf,
The Canterbury Tales, Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” or Robert Frost’s
“The Road Not Taken,” you know something about narrative poetry. Narrative
poems are like our favorite relatives—they like to tell stories.
Historically, poetry has its
roots in an oral tradition that predates all other forms of modern
communication. Before there were printed books, people told stories through
narrative poems. Early narrative verse used rhythm, rhyme, repetition, and
vivid language—easily remembered and recited and, arguably, the first examples
of performance poetry.
Early narratives were ballads,
epics, idylls, and lays. Many of these are long, especially examples such as
Homer’s “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey,” and Tennyson’s “Idylls of the King.”
Narrative poems have also been collected into interrelated groups, as with
Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales.”
As a “genre,” narrative poetry
has retained importance throughout literary history. Over the past thirty
years, the form has made a comeback against lyric poetry, which dominated the
last century. Contemporary narrative
poems are dramatic and compelling and deal with personal histories, losses,
regrets, and recollections. Today’s narrative poems often focus on emotionally
intense moments; they are typically powered by imagery and buttressed by nuance
in ways that distinguish them from prose memoirs.
Personal narrative poems (the type seen most often in today's poetry) initiate contact
between poets and readers; they bring people together through mutual
experiences—specific details may be different, but they “speak” to the shared
situations of both poet and audience. Importantly, while they often delight and
entertain, they can also teach us that we’re not alone.
Personal narratives sometimes fail to move beyond the
anecdotal and simply recount an experience that the poet has had in much the
same way that prose memoirs do. A great personal narrative, though, has to be
larger and more meaningful than an anecdotal poem. In other words, a great
personal narrative can’t rest on its anecdotal laurels and must do more than
simply tell a story. It needs to approach the universal through the personal,
it needs to mean more than the story it tells, and the old rule “show, don’t
tell” definitely applies whether a narrative poem is an epic in the style of Homer, a collection of narratives as in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, a "mood" narrative as in Poe's "The Raven," or a personal narrative as in Frost's "The Road Not Taken."
Guidelines:
1. Think about a story that you really want to tell: something that
happened to you (or to someone you know), a memory that haunts you, a family
legend, or a dream. It may also be completely fictional.
2. Make
a list (or do a free write) in which you record the important details of the story you
want to write. Include the main “characters” and a bit about their
relationships to one another.
3. Decide upon the approach you’d like to take in your
narrative: chronological, flashback, or reflective. In chronological,
you structure your poem around a time-ordered sequence of events; in flashback,
you write from a perspective of looking back; and in reflective, you write
thoughtfully or “philosophically” about the story you tell.
4. Begin writing in the first person singular, but feel free to change
that once you’ve completed a couple of drafts. The narrator of the poem doesn’t have to be you—you have
the option of writing in the first, second, or third person. Consider a variety
of perspectives before deciding.
5.
Start with a “bang” by beginning with a startling detail (or part of your
story). A good narrative poem doesn’t have to begin at the beginning of the
story. Move the story forward (and look back) from whatever your “point of entry” may be.
6. Be aware that merely telling your story and arranging it in lines
and stanzas won’t make it a poem. Think about the qualities of writing that
make good poems good and include some of them in this poem.
Tips:
1. Remember that narrative poems often fail because the poets have
included too much detail. Leave
out details that might mean something to you but aren’t essential to the
narrative you’ve chosen to tell.
2. Watch out for over-use of adjectives.
3. Don’t waste words introducing characters or describing scenes—jump
in with both feet.
4. Don’t ramble. Be concise and get to the point. Yes, there should be a point to your narrative—something
that’s something bigger than the experience, something with which readers will
be able to relate. Along that line, be sure to leave room in your poem for the
reader to enter and “belong.”
5. Don’t simply relate your narrative or tell your readers what they
should feel. Your job is to show and not to tell. Avoid “emotion words” such as
“anger”—bear in mind that when someone is angry he or she is more likely to
slam a door than to say, “Hey, I’m angry.” You can show anger or any other
emotion without ever using the words. Let actions and sensory images lead your
readers to understand the emotions in the poem. As the writer of a personal
narrative poem, it’s your job to include revealing details, not to interpret or
explain them for your readers. You may want to avoid the passive voice, “to be”
verbs, and “ing” endings as these can inhibit the process of showing rather
than telling.
6. Set a tone for your narrative poem Tone in poetry is an overall
feeling that inhabits every corner of your poem. Think about your story and the
feeling with which you want your readers to leave the poem.
7. Think about the perspective from which you want to tell your story.
Do you want to tell the story as if it were happening in the present (using the
present tense)? Do you want to write from a perspective of looking back (past
tense)? This is, of course, up to you and you will need to think about how use
of the past or of the present tense will impact your poem.
8. Just as a short story includes rising action, a climax, and
denouement or resolution, so should a personal narrative poem. Use of stanzas
can be helpful in emphasizing the sequence of your poem. Be acutely aware that
you’re writing a poem and not prose. Narrative poetry often springs from a
prose impulse and becomes mired in prose-like details. Remember that you’re
writing a poem and should be focused on imagery, figurative language, and the
sound quality (alliteration, assonance, dissonance) of your work. Don’t become
so engrossed in the story that you forget about the elements of good poetry!
Examples:
"Beowulf" by an anonymous Anglo-Saxon poet
