Dramatic monologue
 

I've decided to try to tackle a subject by means of dramatic monologue, and I'm running into a problem. So this thread is my attempt--selfish, but perhaps educational for others as well--to seek advice.

All the dramatic monologues I can think of this morning are spiced with extra color: Browning's use historical detail ("My Last Duchess" and "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister") and Hecht's use an exotic setting ("See Naples and Die") or the extra tension of illness ("The Invisible Man").

What examples can you point to, or what techniques can you suggest, that grab and keep the reader's interest in an IP monologue set in the now, in absolutely contemporary conversational language?

Maryann,

Not my thing, clearly, and yet there are lots of these. The usual candidates like Tintern Abbey and Dover Beach, but don't forget the outliers, like Hymn to Prosepine. Not in IP, of course, but a monologue nonetheless. I think the speaker is meant to be Julian. Oh, and, the blessed damozel (also not in IP) ...

More as I think of them,

Thanks,

Bill
(editing in, after having reread your question: you may wish to look at some of the poems in James Wright's Shall We Gather at the River. I wouldn't exactly call them DMs, but many are in IP, in contemporary speech, and they are certainly monologues...

Hmmm... may have gotten the book wrong. Try this: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/arch....html?id=16968
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/arch...html?id=173010
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/arch...html?id=171354
This one's fun: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/arch...html?id=237188

Maryann, this is not as much pointers as it's research points. You can check the universally accessible anthology of dramatic monologues (177 claimed) here at Poetry Foundation.

This one from Ai is as riveting as it is strange -- or rather, employs strange devices -- and is in the present (though IP is missing ... as I'm sure it will be with most in that collection).

Cheers,
...Alex

Thanks, Bill and Alex--I'd forgotten about that category at the Poetry Foundation archive. The James Wright examples seem especially helpful. In an odd coincidence, the idea I'm grappling with features a piece of Hazel Atlas glassware.

Check out Frost's dramatic poems, mostly in blank verse. Also Black Ice and Rain, by Michael Donaghy. Hecht has a lot of them too, The Venetian Vespers and The Grapes being a couple more examples. Andrea del Sarto is another great one of Browning's. Not sure why a poem should be less interesting to you if it is historical or about illness...

Thanks, Chris. Those are all good examples, some of which I eventually remembered.

What I was trying to get at was the limitation I see in working without certain colorful elements. "Duchess" gets some of its interest from historical detail. "Invisible Man" gets it from the drama inherent in disease and the threat of death. I have a relatively undramatic contemporary subject and I'm looking for help in drawing the reader and holding interest in people who might seem boring--and also in creating a psychologically believable narrator. But all examples help.

Dana Gioia has written some dramatic monologues set in the present, and read a good one at West Chester last spring, about an encounter with a ghost. Unfortunately I don't remember the title - maybe someone else will.

Also, if you have some money to invest (or inter-library loan) you might want to look at DRAMATIC MONOLOGUES
A Contemporary Anthology, from U. of Evansville Press. This collection includes monologue lyrics and sonnets, as well
as the standard blank-verse format (and several spherians, too).

Maryann, I do a lot of dramatic monologues, some contemporary, some mythic. If you handle the IP in a conversational way, most readers will not even notice that you are writing blank verse. I'd say that the ways to grab interest include creating a striking voice, characterizing the speaker through what he or she says, describing surprising or moving events, suggesting that the speaker is unreliable, using intriguing metaphors, irony, vivid images--much as you would do in any poem. It can help if you have some idea of whom the speaker is addressing and why. Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology added some interest by having the speakers all be dead, addressing the reader from beyond the grave.

Susan

Maryann,

Finding the level of formality is important. The more conversational the tone, the more we may warm up to the character, but the more difficult it becomes to sustain IP--at least, I've found it to be more difficult. Also, how self-aware is the character? This question leads to the more complex one of psychic distance. John Gardner has a fine analysis of this in his Art of Fiction.

Distant : "Thanksgiving Thursday I destroyed the car."

Close: "Turkey stuffed. Snow. Skidding. Limbs slice my cheek."

Hope this helps. Most of Judah Benjamin is dramatic monologue so I sympathize.

At the risk of showing my ignorance, let me ask a basic question or two. What is the difference between a "dramatic monologue" and any poem in which the speaker is not necessarily the poet? Can a reader always know that he is reading a dramatic monologue rather than a poem that is true to the poet's life and experience? We've all read poems which seemed to be personal utterances of the poet, but it turned out that the details and the situations were made up. Are these poems dramatic monologues, or is the term reserved for a narrower class of poem?