 Poetry: August 27, 2025 Issue [#13313] |
This week: Storied Poetry Edited by: Fyn  
More Newsletters By This Editor 
 
1. About this Newsletter
2. A Word from our Sponsor
3. Letter from the Editor
4. Editor's Picks
5. A Word from Writing.Com
6. Ask & Answer
7. Removal instructions
Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn. ~~Thomas Gray
We are all born as storytellers. Our inner voice tells the first story we ever hear. ~~Kamand Kojouri
An old man likes to return in memory to the days of his youth like a stranger who longs to go back to his own country. He delights to tell stories of the past like a poet who takes pleasure in reciting his best poem. ~~Kahlil Gibran
The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon. ~~Brandon Sanderson
I'll tell you a secret. Old storytellers never die. They disappear into their own story. ~~Vera Nazarian
|
Story poetry, often called 'narrative poetry' is a genre that combines the varied elements of 'telling a story' only in a more poetic form. Oft rhyming, but not necessarily. The rhyming part of it goes back and back and back to the days of histories and stories being memorized and passed down whereby the rhyming element made it easier for people to remember them and then pass them onwards.
Homer wrote The Iliad and The Odyssey , which was told over and over again until much later it was written down. This was still before many people could read, and so it was read to the masses. In The Iliad, the is a section called The Catalogue of Ships that poetically tells of the various contingents of the Achaean army that sailed to Troy. This is just an example of how history could be presented and passed down through the generations.
In the days of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the twenty-four poems that made it up were memorized and the favorites oft requested. These types of poems have beginnings, middles, and ends. They have characters, climaxes, and the round up of the message and/or lesson at the ending.
Often, in 'epic' poetry, rhyme is used to both move the story along as well as to keep an audience enmeshed in the story. And yet, story-poetry can also use free-flowing styles of more modern verse. Typically refered to as 'The Ballads', these were the rhymic 'sing-songy' sort of poems that were easy to memorize and thus spread to a wider audience. Think Paul Revere's Ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow or The Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert W. Service. I'm sure you can think of others.
Story-telling poems are fun to write because they mesh story with poetry. They are typically longer pieces, but they don't necessarily need to be thousand-line epics either. It is an interesting cross or bridge between poetry and novel.
|
| | | Two Seeds (13+)
Two Seeds: Prophetic poem of good vs evil, from creation to judgment, rooted in scripture.
#2339396 by Noisy Wren  |
|  | Trunk (E)
True title is My Grandmother's Grandfather's Trunk
#947871 by Fyn |
|
Have an opinion on what you've read here today? Then send the Editor feedback! Find an item that you think would be perfect for showcasing here? Submit it for consideration in the newsletter!
https://www.Writing.Com/go/nl_form
To stop receiving this newsletter, click here for your newsletter subscription list. Simply uncheck the box next to any newsletter(s) you wish to cancel and then click to "Submit Changes". You can edit your subscriptions at any time.
|
This printed copy is for your personal use only. Reproduction
of this work in any other form is not allowed and does violate its copyright. |
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
