10. A compelling subject

The Reaper finishes: "The way any story is told will determine whether or not it is compelling to readers that know how to read narrative in poems. Subjects resist authors lacking the experience, knowledge, and staying power to tell them. This alone explains the inability of many poets to write narrative. It also explains their releuctance to try, their frar of the form, and their fearful denigration of it."

The experience and knowledge I’ll leave others to judge, but I know I would not have had the staying power to finish my attempt at narrative if I had not been serializing it here on the wing. There were more than a couple of times I thought I had reached a wall. But it also felt like tight-rope walking too. At any moment I knew I could fall. Fail. But I felt committed to finishing it, because it was such a public act. And the Reaper did indeed help. I heartily recommend its checklist.

But I would add an eleventh item to the checklist.

11. Remember the Metaphor.
For me, I feel there should be overriding metaphors that tie the characters, action, time, and setting together. Otherwise, you risk that the poem will be merely biography, drama, history, or geography. It’s the interplay of the four that kept my interest and I hope keeps the readers interest.

(Thanks to Dave for picking up on this. Check out his serialization of his book-length poem at Via Negativa.)

Lastly, like Ernie Banks would say, let’s play two. Maybe an attempt at postmodern narrative. (Now that would be something else.) I just picked up the Norton anthology of Postmodern American Poetry. That Charles Olson: what a nut!

UPDATE: And check out Mike Snider's Shortish Piece Of a Longish Story.