[Gail White]

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).

[Susan McLean]

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

[Lance Levens]

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.

[Roger Slater]

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?

[Maryann Corbett]

Roger, I can't speak for everybody else who's replying (and thank you, Chris and Gail and Susan and Lance), but I'm reserving the term "dramatic monologue" for a pretty specific situation. A dramatic monologue is a persona poem--a character who's not the poet is being created or borrowed--and in general it's also that character's half of a two-person exchange.

In some cases the speaker is speaking to himself (and us) only, and those are soliloquies, strictly speaking, rather than monologues. But maybe that's a needlessly picky distinction.

[Susan McLean]

Roger, I would venture that a lyrical or descriptive poem in the first person is not really a dramatic monologue, whether the speaker is the poet or a persona. On the other hand, I think that if the dramatic and narrative elements are there, a poem can be labeled a dramatic monologue, whether the speaker is the poet or a persona.

Susan

[Michael Cantor]

My understanding is that one of key points of a dramatic monologue (My Last Duchess is a classic example) is that the poem operates on multiple levels, that speaker unknowingly reveals more of himself/herself or the story than intended.

[Roger Slater]

So the poet is winking at the reader about the character who is speaking in the poem? Which means that if even a careful reader conflates the speaker with the poet, the poem is a failure (at least to the extent it wants to be a dramatic monologue), because a "character" is created and not just a "persona," which can exist even if perfectly disguised as the poet.

Every now and then someone here posts a poem in which the speaker tells of a terrible personal tragedy, like the death of a child or a fatal diagnosis, and generally the poet discloses "don't worry, I made it up," so people can react without inhibition. I suppose such a disclosure wouldn't be necessary for a "dramatic monologue," because everyone is supposed to be able to figure out that there is an invented character speaking.