I'm sure many of us have had the experience of having a narrator barge into our consciousness as we write, as if to say, "Hey, I'm telling this story, get out of my way!"

Often, that's the only way I am able to get out of the way of the poetry I write. It makes for much better poetry, I think...so long as my grasp of dialect and mannerisms enables the narrator to put forth his or her personality convincingly.

My first published poem (last September, yea!) was a set of six sonnets telling the Red Riding Hood story with six different narrators: the inner-city mother, the high-society grandmother, the absentee father, the accused wolf's mother, the wolf (who sees himself in his victim), and the girl (who comments on "Peter and the Wolf" more than her own story). The narrators and versions vary so greatly that these characters could not actually co-inhabit the same story.

Some of these dramatic personae worked much better than others. (I think I overdid the dialect for the mom, for example--rural white writers attempt inner-city black dialogue at their peril.) But it was interesting to approach the same basic storyline from completely different mindsets.

Julie Stoner



[This message has been edited by Julie Stoner (edited August 23, 2004).]

Entertainingly, to get to Tim's question about "who would want to write like that in this century!" it's been a new century for about four years, and I'm currently reading the work of someone else who's writing something very much old fashioned post-post modernist: Daniel Handler's "A Series of Unfortunate Events," written in persona as Lemony Snickett, telling the tongue in cheek melodrama adventures of the Baudelaire orphans (and soon to be a movie next fall with Jim Carey as the villainous Count Olaf).

Having had a severely demented Victorian epistolery novel recently published (and paid for, though not as wildly promoted), I think it's not that unreasonable.

Things come back into fashion because folk enjoy them.

Fair enough. I hope the things I love come back in fashion.

Dave, I've found this discussion very enlightening. Tim had mentioned that my All I Need to Know poem currently being workshopped on the Deep End was the sort of thing you were talking about in the Dramatic Voice thread here, and that surprised me until I read the thread and understood what you are getting at. The voice of my narrator is rather more understated than dramatic in the fiery or melodramatic sense. But I think I understand what he meant by that comment now; in acting or performing sometimes the best way to emphasize is to lower the voice rather than to raise it. If you have time I hope you'll look at the poem.

Thanks for this thread and for the narrative discussion. This is the kind of poetry I read for enjoyment.

Carol

Carol,
That's what we literary types call a kick-ass poem. I love the clincher in the last line, and how I makes good use of natural idiom.
Bravo.
Dave