GROUP Analyzing Narrative Poetry

Analyzing Narrative Poetry

In this lesson, you'll learn how to analyze a particular type of poetry.

Objectives

Students will:

• Analyze a narrative poem.

Skills Needed

Students must be able to:

• Define narrative.
• Identify elements of narrative structure.

Warm Up

Read the short lines below:

The wind howled loud across the hill, She stood there, frightened, cold, and still.

Respond to the questions in the Padlet.

Another Way to Tell It

How can a poem also be a narrative?

What's your favorite way to experience a good story? With a group of friends around a campfire? In the lyrics of a beautiful song? Larger than life on a movie screen? In writing, the same basic story can take many different forms. Two accounts of the same events may have completely different effects, depending on the literary genre, the author's style, and the author's purpose for telling the story. Think about how different a story might seem when delivered as a poem, instead of a magazine article or novel. A poem that tells a story is called a narrative poem. Since poetry by definition contains "sound effects" such as rhythm and rhyme and uses highly compressed language, word choice matters more in a narrative poem than it does in prose. In a prose story, setting details and images are used to establish mood. In a narrative poem, line breaks, rhythm, and sound effects are just as likely to convey the poem's feeling. A story told in a poem is also more likely to have a "point"--a highly focused meaning--than a prose version of the same story. *Watch video in textbook Why is word choice more important in poetry than in prose?

Words as Music

What makes a poem a poem?

Because a poem is so much shorter than a story, every word and every line break counts. In other words, poets must use words more efficiently than other writers. Some of the devices, or techniques, that poets use to increase the power of their words involve not meaning, but music. See each of the following to learn about four commonly used poetic devices.

Rhythm

Rhythm is a musical quality in language that is created by repetition of accents or stressed syllables. One way to create rhythm is to establish a meter, a pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. In free verse--poetry that doesn't have a regular meter or rhyme scheme--the poet may create rhythm by repeating sentence structures, words, and sounds. Read the free verse example below, listening for its rhythm.

Rhyme

Rhyme is the repetition of the sounds of words, including a vowel sound and the sounds following it, in words that are close together in a poem. Here's a simple example: The rhyming words in the example are blue and you.

Assonance

Assonance is the repetition of similar vowel sounds (but not consonants) in words that are close together in a poem. Here is an example from Carl Sandburg's poem "Early Moon":

Alliteration and Consonance

Alliteration and consonance are both the repetition of consonant sounds in words that are close together. Alliteration is the repetition of a consonant sound at the beginning of words. Consonance is the repetition of a consonant sound in the middle or at the end of words.

The Poetic Story

What's so special about a story told in a poem?

Is there really any difference between a prose story and that same story delivered in a poem? Thanks to the unique qualities of poetry, the difference can be startling. Read the two excerpts below. Which passage is from a poem? What do the prose and poetry versions above have in common, and how are they different?

Is It a Story?

How do you identify and analyze a narrative poem?

In some ways, all poems are alike--they all focus more closely on one subject, and they all use few words to convey lots of meaning. However, a narrative poem is distinct in several important ways from other types of poetry, such as lyric poems. Instead of telling a story, a lyric poem focuses strictly on the speaker's thoughts and feelings about a subject. A narrative poem may express thoughts and feelings, but it also tells a story of some kind. To learn the steps for analyzing a narrative poem, see each tab below and read its content carefully.

Step One

Look for a series of related events.

Some narrative poems tell a traditional story complete with a conventional plot structure. Usually, though, contemporary narrative poems are more subtle in their approach to storytelling. In the poem "The Whole Story," some boxes of old items in an attic jog the speaker's memory about past events. But she doesn't describe this memory from start to finish. She retells the events the way they come back to her, not as they happened. What past events do these lines tell you about?

Step One Con't

In the poem "6:30 a.m.," the narrative or story takes a different form. This poem is focused entirely on a brief period of time in the present. Using precise language, sound effects, and other poetic devices, the poem explores that one moment thoroughly for its meaning. What is happening in the lines above?

Step Two

Examine word choice in the poem. What language does the poet use to explore the events?

In a prose story, the theme or insight about life depends mainly on what happens in the story and how the characters change as a result. In a narrative poem, however, word choice and imagery are usually just as important to the meaning of the poem as the events of the narrative. Read these lines again: What kinds of language and imagery does the speaker use to describe the start of the day?

Step Three

Explain how narrative and word choice combine to help create the meaning of the poem.

Finally, put your observations together to make a statement about the theme of the poem. How do the events of the narrative and the poet's choice of words combine to express a message about life?

You Try It

Analyze a narrative poem by applying the strategies you learned on the previous page.

In both a story and a narrative poem, events have meaning. To analyze a narrative poem, focus on both the events of the narrative and the author's use of language. Read the complete poem "The Whole Story" to see how the narrative develops. Then use your literary analysis skills to answer the questions that follow the poem.

The Whole Story In the attic, I find piles of small things in boxes. Like this: a photo of my first friend in our new town, her sharp laugh, the spools of printer paper we used to make our secret plans. How she hated her brother, how when his face crumpled in a sob she laughed with glee. The phrase I was trying on how to be cruel floats up out of the attic dust and unsettles me. Then this: my own brother, only three and clumsy in his little limbs, wanting to join us as we hover over our games. Only slightly older, there I am, wondering what it might be like to laugh mercilessly, then trying it out on him. Then there are these empty boxes where a memory should be: whatever words I said to the other first graders the day my mom brought my brother to school to visit me, whatever made them point at him and tease and tease. The story part of the story has gone missing. What’s left is one scene—

my classmates crowd his still-small face like petals on a daisy, and laugh until they transform into the sound itself—which I can still hear now, which drowns out the other sounds, which is why I can’t remember why I did it or what I did, just how I knew it wasn’t right. Laura Eve Engel

The Whole Story

The Whole Story

The Whole Story

The Whole Story

Try It Again

Now analyze a different kind of narrative poem.

In the poem "6:30 a.m.," nothing big or dramatic happens. Instead, the speaker finds meaning in a series of small, everyday events. Read the poem below and then answer the questions beside it to analyze its meaning and language.

and touches my daughter’s cheek, her bluish eyelids still covering dreams. 2. The sun rises, morning smells of coffee, the world is plugged in, and spins. TV on, 64 degrees and clear skies, Here are the headlines at this hour: The sun rises, light falls on the faces of people waiting in line for the bus. It’s a new day, a second chance, or third, or fourth, or fifth. The sun rises over the same struggle to live and let live.

6:30 a.m. by Claudia Serea 1. I part the night with both hands and surface. Light moves across lawns, over hydrangeas, zinnias, and yews, light climbs the walls and trickles inside rooms, it tangles in curtains and hangs in hair. This ray has traveled 93 million miles only to find your unshaven face. Light moves over sleeping lovers’ bodies. Over dry skin and heavy breath, it glides across the carpet

3. And light pours in rows of windows and into the Hudson River. Birds sing and pull up the sun on an invisible chain. Here’s your chance: take it, grab it. Today is my turn. Light fills my cup to the brim, and I drink it. My body fills with words that glow and burn. The sun rises, and I step right in. I am transparent and alive.

The sun climbs over the gleaming city, over the homeless woman curled on cardboard guarded by her quiet dog, over the halal street vendor frying rice in Faith’s Lunchbox, over dissonant scaffolding, workers yelling, over the man with a jack-hammer stammering in a cloud of dust. The sun’s up over the traffic cop, over delivery men and baristas, over steam and car fumes. The sun rises and brings another day, a do-over, a rewind and replay. The sun rises, and no one wants to be saved.

Try It Again

Try It Again

Try It Again

Try It Again

Assess Yourself

Assess Yourself

Assess Yourself

Assess Yourself

Grow Your Vocabulary

• grudge
• civil
• piteous
• overthrows
• strife
• nought
• profaners
• pernicious
• partisans
• forfeit

What words will you need to know later in this lesson?

Next you're going to read a poetic passage from Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet. The unfamiliar language in Shakespeare's works can be a challenge for modern readers. The activities on this page will help you familiarize yourself with some of these words before you read.

Use What You Know

Can you apply what you know about analyzing narrative poetry?

Is it drama or poetry? Shakespeare's plays are both. Romeo and Juliet is famous for its tragic tale of unlucky lovers and also for its beautiful poetic lines. *Watch video in textbook Like other Elizabethan dramatists, Shakespeare often used a chorus as the play's narrator. The voice of the chorus introduces the story in a prologue and then periodically explains and comments on the action. The prologue of Romeo and Juliet is a narrative poem in which the chorus tells the audience what the play is going to be about. Read these lines from the prologue out loud so that you can feel their rhythm as well as hear their meaning:

Homework

Breaking Down a Story in Verse

Read the poem "Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allan Poe.

Analysis Questions:

• Summary (4–5 sentences): What is the story of the poem?

• Characters: Who are the main characters? What do we learn about them?

• Setting: Where and when does the poem take place? Cite one line as evidence.

• Plot/Conflict: What is the main conflict? How is it resolved?
• Narrative Elements in Poetry: Identify two poetic techniques (imagery, rhyme, repetition, tone, figurative language) and explain how they help tell the story.

• Theme: What message or lesson does the poem communicate? Support your answer with evidence from the text.

You will complete this in a Kami document in Canvas.

Exit Ticket

Take the Analyzing Narrative poetry Quiz