The current poet laureates have all been narrative.
So why not get into it and just play with it?

Write in a style that uses the narrative form in expressing a social element whether its political or existential...or somehow makes some kind of social commentary whether based on life.. or whatever..

Seems simple...right? nope.
There are certain aspects like the careful handling of colors, textures, and unique turn of phrases... or as I have been learning playing elements like time.

Philip Levine

Kay Ryan

Frank O'Hara Earlish.. Narrative

The trick to this...is make the reader be there with you.. You eat something, make them taste it...you see something...make them see it...
You touch something...make them touch it...
and when you done...trick them by slipping in something bigger...that they can take away...

So here you go poets... have fun with it.

Like this?


Her Name Is Aida

I walk through the clattering garbage pails
where rats have started to converge; the
bus stops at corners where even the moon
is afraid to change shape as to not cause
attention. In a way, I can explain everything
by the remolded faces I see every single
morning down by my street, and I know quite
well what it's like to give up, to not give a damn
anymore.

There's an old black woman who drinks from
a large red and white milk container on the
stoop of her brownstone apartment. Open
cashmere coat, nightgown and sweat socks
tell me she has run the course of life, trying
to do everything right, before she accepted
inevitable defeat. She is not tempted to say
anything to me whatsoever, nor I to her, but the
way she sits with legs astride beckon me to ask
for her name, just a first name,

anything to identify her with. We go through
the motions, rising and leaving without ever
really connecting with one another. I see the
faces sooner than I hear the voices but they
speak to me just as powerfully, crying out for
a help I cannot offer them. I'm disconnected,
I cut incisions into my bare skin just to feel. The
beads of sweat from my body bubble as I sit in
a steamy bathtub with the lights off while blood
trembles across the mist of porcelain.

The little wrinkles from the water serve as
artificial aging, something good to see, to think
about when muscles soften and all you have
left is what you carry with you inside; all your
loves, all your sorrows, stacked up in your heart,
alone, all alone. I need to have somebody with
me, when fear comes. Someone who will take
away the loneliness, who doesn't mind the hot
baths and the sit-downs under a freezing cold
shower, someone who can be as merciful to

my own romantic Bronx setting as I am. I hold
my arm up across my face, afraid to be seen as
dark red trickles down my armpit, my breasts
heaving under the crimson pool, under the
shallow breaths of insult and injury yet there
is no physical pain that scratches and scrawls
at my soul. Dirt lies deep, and it's not found
on the surface of a shower floor, or in specks
on a washcloth. Walk cross-town someday and open
your eyes so that they meet that of your neighbors,

bring the old woman on the stoop some warm
percolated coffee for her milk as you drink
and smile between sips together. Show her your
scars from cutting, and your bruises from all the
times you jumped the subway turnstile because
you had to get work and didn't have enough cash
for the fare. Watch as the sun disappears under
the canopy of the squatters building across the way
where tonight is poker and beer night under the stars,
just you, and Aida. Oh yeah, her name is Aida.

or this?


Neda for Neda Soltan written by me

There will be no allusions to remote beautiful places,
no cigarettes, exotic drinks or love songs under the
breath of a moon-misted night in this write. The lights
are dim, the colors are violet, the streets are cold, and
unempathetic, respectively by turbulence and upward
movement.

The words are wearied, the adverbs are still, the prologues
are over, and the resonance is immobility. Pain and solitude
roam silently through the Tehran pavement where
language and tone have paid the ultimate risk of serious
misunderstanding. The lyrics are literate; the witness is a
phrase, Neda, Neda, Neda,

Voice of Iran! Angel of Iran! Your brothers and sisters
bleed out with you in their call to freedom. As your
departure grew near the poets started to gather, lost
in the vision of your wordless radiance, a paradox to
the heights we have yet to reach and grow into. I saw
the symbol of rigidity and inflexibility,

among the glaring faces; white with disbelief as pronouns
ricocheted pointing fingers in a suspended reality amidst
the gradual process of change. Deep within our vocabulary
your tears, your heart became recurrent words of hope,
triumph, sacrifice; part euphoric, part tragic as time passed
normally with some serious soul-searching.

The camera focuses on the image making the moment an
ardent memory yet the poets know to speed-up the
movie so that the truth can be felt within the natural cycles
of various tongues, as we band together cradled by creative
spirit and stifling scenario. Some may think these exhibitionistic
solutions, but the calm and unconventional ones know

we connect with the spirit of fidelity, conviction and peace.
The dance craze is political; the dream is love flowering with
unity. A young woman has been murdered today but through
her we will explore and reject choices with open dialogue
and contribution. We shall make her the seedling among thousands
who stood idly by in the hour when we all saw red.

TheresaC: these are amazing contrubutions. I hope you have put these up on your page, why Have I not seen them?

Hi:0 Thanks so much! I think they are uploaded to gotpoetry..can't remember though. One of them...Her Name Is Aida has been published. The Neda one has not.

You can add me as a friend of facebook if you wish...anyone from this site can:)

www.facebook.com/tcnewbill

Just as, perhaps, the starting point for a discussion: the metaphors and language are indisputably excellent, but in what sense are these poems as opposed to passages of prose that have been chopped up into short lines?

Of these three, Lyla, I truly do love Philip Levine - but I can't write that way. I can dream of it.

Well, I guess all my poetry could be classified as "Modern Poetry" though I classify it as prosaic poetry - it's a mesh between poetry and prose.

"Formal" poetry just does not interest me really - just as I find rhyming to be annoying in poetry for the most part (then again, I've accepted that I just don't really care for most poetry as I find it wishy-washy stream-of-consciousness mumbo jumbo and a lot of "feelings" instead of telling a good story). Hey, there are always exceptions if the work tells a good story - but it's just generally not me.

There's nothing wrong with that if someone jives with it though - there's plenty of room around for poets and prose writers (and bluring the lines) out there for everyone to have their own niche as we're all unique as individuals.

j.p.