Saturday, March 12, 2016

Prompt #249 –Telling the Story

 
We’ve worked with narrative poems in the past (see Prompt #171, November 9, 2013) and, because of the genre’s popularity, we’re revisiting it this week. The challenge will be to write a personal narrative (a personal memory) in a poem and to write it in such a way that you leave out enough details for the reader to “fit” into your poem. In other words, it will be your story, but you'll need to think about why that story will be interesting, and perhaps even compelling, to your readers.

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 written 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 focus on brief but emotionally intense moments; they are typically powered by imagery and buttressed by nuance in ways that distinguish them from prose memoirs.

Narrative poems 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, they 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. 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.

Guidelines:

1. Don’t simply relate your narrative or tell your readers what they should feel. Your job is to show and not to tell.

2. 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.

3. Decide upon the approach you’d like to take in your personal 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.

5. 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.”

Example:

Click Title to Read “At the Factory Where My Mother Worked”

By Maria Mazziotti Gillan




14 comments:

  1. So glad you've addressed narrative poetry again (never too often). I've read so many narrative poems that are really just prose pieces 'disguised' as poetry. They appear in lines and stanzas, but are really prose. This form of poetry isn't as easy to write as a lot of writers seem to think. This exercise is really helpful. Thanks!

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    1. Thanks so much for your comment, Jamie! You're right, narrative poetry can be a challenge.

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  2. Your example poem is great! I heard Ms. Gillan read a long time ago, and she was wonderful.

    This is a great idea for a prompt. I think too many poets don't truly understand the difference between poetry and prose, and their narrative poems are more prose than poetry.

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    1. Thanks so much for your comment, Sandy R. How wonderful that you've heard Maria Gillan read — she's a master of the narrative poem, and her readings are always superb!

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  3. As Jamie says, this week's prompt "isn't as easy to write". The attempt is definitely worth the effort. An excellent exercise. Thank you, Adele. :)

    ~ ~ ~

    Solitude of the Place

    Outside the window — a child's imagination —
    pink finches the blossoms of a cherry tree
    fall to change to little pink clouds
    gently along as the morning ghost trains
    on railroad tracks, that grow
    from two large beaten copper bell jar planters
    by the disused railroad station house
    at the foot of a mountainous landscape.

    Now every day a trail of the past on the wind
    through broken windows of the house, that struggles
    to keep memories under moth-eaten dust sheets
    and I have become an old goat to wander on
    well-beaten trails of day-dreams laid out
    through the mountains by those who travelled before me.

    And I am puzzled by the loss of time and the search
    for what I believed a spiritual path which led
    somewhere remarkable only to find an increase
    of speed towards the verge of a precipice where
    no mark or anything remotely remarkable
    left to show that anything at all has passed.

    ~ ~ ~

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    1. Nicely done, Lewis! I'm always so happy to see where the prompts lead. Thanks so much for sharing with us!

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  4. Oh banana fields
    fields and fields
    hack and pack

    pack
    and pee
    climb a tree

    NO!
    scale a wall
    a bathroom wall

    leave space
    for the
    tarantella
    to cross
    or chance
    a dance
    a jerky dance

    Oh those bananas
    fields and fields of bananas

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    1. Such a happy feel to this poem — I love it!

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    2. So happy to read two of your poems this week! In this one you "play" with sound very effectively. Thanks so much for sharing with us.

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  5. oceaning on the
    Atlantic
    following a disappearing horizon
    cremation
    came to mind
    expansiveness
    of ocean and sea
    liberated
    experiencing
    the lightness of being

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    Replies
    1. Risa, how do you do it? Brilliant!

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    2. Superb, Risa! In your own inimitable style you've told a story! Well done, my friend!

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  6. = /\ .. /\ = A fat happy cat! sort of
    Thanks, Lewis

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  7. Thanks, Adele! And both are based on life experienced: on a farm in Israel, coming back on an ocean liner from Israel.

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