[Maryann Corbett]

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?

[W.F. Lantry]

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

[Alex Pepple]

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

[Maryann Corbett]

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.

[Chris Childers]

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...

[Maryann Corbett]

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.