[David Mason]

Well, at one reading, I'd say it doesn't just commune with our dead master, it CHANNELS him, even down to the lengths of wood. This poem is damned well done, though I'm sure Richard is aware that it will always be compared to Frost in subject, technique, etc. I think the easy freshness of the rhymes is remarkable--RF would have done this in blank verse, no doubt. I have to look at it again to see if it's narrative or vignette. So give me time. I mean to say something about the other narratives posted here, but I've got a full slate of requests from all over the map and have to work in short bursts.

I'd like to ask Richard if he also writes about modern suburban experience, which would appear to be a big part of his present life.

"a living purpose to the solid world"--what would that do to the final line, I wonder? Just toying out of dissatisfaction with the two modifiers in their present position.

[This message has been edited by David Mason (edited August 17, 2004).]

[Steven Schroeder]

Dave:

This is a very interesting thread. One thing I was hoping you might comment on is that hazy area between narrative and lyric that you allude to with the term "vignette": poems that clearly use some or many of the standard elements of narrative: characters, dialogue, chronological sequence of action, rise and fall of action, etc.; but that end up not having full story arcs or some other key element to make them a true narrative piece, so they end up at least partially lyric poetry. Perhaps you could comment on where exactly that line between narrative and lyric blurs, and some of the relative strengths and weaknesses of a true narrative poem versus various sorts of narrative/lyric hybrid. I'll post one of my own poems that I know you've seen before as an example of the sort of mix I'm talking about, in this case a narration of a scene that definitely does not present a full plot.

--

A Little Schadenfreude

You see the slivered scar an inch
above my brow, like silver shards
of windshield starred by rock? Fun story.
Dad served at Landstuhl Hospital,
and in my sixth or seventh year
I met our German landlord’s daughter
for the first time, in the backyard.
She replied “Nein” when I inquired
“Sprechen Sie Englisch?” Practical
vocabulary gone, what next?
Count eins bis zehn? Express my love
for Schokolade? Her solution:
action, the universal language.
A log lay moldering in leaves,
smaller but denser than a Fußball.
Seizing the wood, she split my head,
flurrying bark and wafting cobwebs,
followed by blood, its thickness filling
my eye and nostril, resting last
against my lips-—mingled with things
unsaid. She chattered, laughed at damage
as you do too. Although we bound
the wound, a splinter—-like a shadow
or taciturn tattoo—-lodged deep
enough for permanence in flesh
and memory. Now decades later
I share the strange deluge of blood
and words, this stranger joy, with you.

------------------
Steve Schroeder

[Deborah Warren]

Welcome, Dave. This thread interests me because I'm a hard sell on most narrative verse. On the other hand, it works for me when it exhibits your 'narrative economy'. But it's not easy to achieve the compression we (I) want from poetry when you're telling a tale of any complexity; and the poet has to find a way to keep a restless reader like me reading with verbal delights all along the way. Hecht does it for me, but Frost CAN founder badly; even Homer nods.

[Roger Slater]

Why tell a story in poetry instead of prose? The following story would perhaps be a bit sappy and stock in nature, but Catherine Tufariello’s version (for me, and others I’m sure) rises to the level of high art and is very moving. So simple-seeming in the telling, yet the decisions Catherine made in terms of which details to describe and the sequence of those details are anything but simple.


A PROPOSAL IN THE CLEVELAND MUSEUM,
WINTER 2002

...................For Dick Davis,
...................who told me this story

An easel’s turned away
To face the wall between them –a benign
Virgin who watches while young shepherds pray,
And a swart Bacchus, swilling wine.
A student sketch, he thinks,
And idly walks behind it, pauses, blinks,
Seeing no canvas, but a printed sign:

Gina, at last I’ve found
The way to ask you. Will you marry me?
Please say yes. Quickly he looks around,
While angels, saints, the Child on Mary’s knee,
Two Popes, aristocrats
In velvet capes and soft tricornered hats
Seem silent partners in the mystery.

Just then a guard comes near
And turns the easel so it can be seen,
As though by covert signal: Gina’s here!
The tall brunette? The slender girl in green,
So raptly brooding on
The Holy Family with a Young St. John?
The bluejeanned bonde across the mezzanine?

But no, among the rest
An older woman –dark, with deep-set eyes,
Plump, fortyish, unfashionably dressed–
Now gasps, as through the milling crowd she spies
Her name. Cheeks flushed, her hands
Flying to cover them, at first she stands
Transfixed in her confusion and surprise,

Then turns to him –a thin,
Bald, slightly scruffy man, about her age,
One who, like her, could never hope to win
The hearts of strangers glancing from a page
To see him board a train
Or raise his collar higher in the rain,
But who now shares with her a floodlit stage,

A spellbound silence. Yes,
She says. Again: Oh, yes, and then in tears
Embraces him. At once, as if to bless
A miracle redeeming all their years
Of numbing tedium,
The guards, who’d waited hours for her to come,
Break into smiles and lead the crowd in cheers.



[This message has been edited by Roger Slater (edited August 18, 2004).]

[Tim Murphy]

Yekaterina has a gift to surpass even her hero, Richard Wilbur, when it comes to celebration. This is an instance of that. It is a poem for which her gloomy older friends are truly grateful.

[David Mason]

I admire all sorts of things in the poems above by Kevin, Terese and Steve, and think Catherine's perfectly retold story is characteristic of her stunning debut volume. Though space might well prohibit postings and discussions of longer poems, especially for those of us who must avoid tying up phone lines throughout the day, I would like to invite Sphereans to think about larger narrative structures and Deborah's well-taken point about economy. When is verse technique abetting the story, and when is it impeding it? When does verse allow us to leave things out that a prose writer would include? When does verse open up opportunities for expansion?

I should add that I've finally been able to post some notes on dramatic voice on a new thread, and I'd invite reactions to those. Maybe some day I'll figure out how to write an essay on the subject.

Dave

[Janet Kenny]

Dave
I share Deborah's difficulties with narrative verse. When I was a child I delighted in Scottish Border ballads but now I do look for compression in poetry. I can still greatly enjoy a narrative poem that sustains my attention but find my mind drifting if they go on and on with uplifted finger like the Aged Man a Sitting on the Gate.
I too love Hecht's compressed narrative poems.
I am always open to conversion.
best
Janet

[Julie Steiner]

It's natural to compare narrative poetry to other narrative forms, isn't it?

If I care about the characters in a novel, play, or film, I am somewhat forgiving of slow pacing, implausible plotlines, and other flaws.

If the characters don't resonate with me, I don't care what happens to them. I then bail out entirely, no matter how thrilling the action or special effects.

Ditto for narrative poems, except that I'm sometimes willing to include locales as "characters" in their own right.

Don't get me wrong--I don't have to "like" the characters. (As Shakespeare shows repeatedly, even an unappealing character can be resonant.)

Julie Stoner



[This message has been edited by Julie Stoner (edited August 22, 2004).]

[FOsen]

Dave- You arrived during the dog days when I was gone, so I'll add my welcome here - this is a great thread and I look forward to Ludlow. I esteem compression, too, there's little worse than a baggy poem. Before I'll read Darlington Falls, I want to read Cats of the Temple or The Mail From Anywhere and know that the writer's not going to waste my time.

That said, good verse novels offer rewards one doesn't find in short verse. Also: I've come to believe that if Pewtry (sorry, I have to use Amis's construction to keep a straight face) is to undergo anything resembling a renaissance, it'll be because someone writes a great, trashy, page-turning, pot-boiling verse novel that seduces lots of people into reading verse before they know it. Seth came closer than most, but Don Juan is still the one to beat.

No one's mentioned it - but it's interesting both because it pushes lots of narrative boundaries and is the work of an accomplished prose writer - Byrne, the last work by Anthony Burgess.

Frank

[This message has been edited by FOsen (edited August 22, 2004).]

[Janet Kenny]

For me, Nabokov's translation of Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin" is the best narrative poetry experience I know.

I guess we need an English-speaking Pushkin.


Frank,
A link to an article by Gioia about Byrne.
Byrne

I haven't read that work of Burgess's but did you know that he was a serious composer of classical music?
Janet

[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited August 22, 2004).]