Narrative poems include epics, idylls, lays, ballads and metrical romance. Narrative poetry is a form of poetry that tells a story, often making use of the voice of a narrator. Non-narrative poetry includes the lyric poem, odes, lament, and epithalamium, but to name a few.
A Metrical tale is a narrative poem which is written in verse that relates to real or imaginary events in simple, straight forward language, from a wide range of subjects, characters, life experiences, and emotional situations. Two famous examples are Evangeline, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882), and Sir Walter Scott’s (1771–1832) Lady of the Lake. The majority of metrical tales recount romantic stories and are usually told from the first POW. Please see the example, The Family Tree, here on my Poetry page.
Novelists, as well as some poets, often rush the ending and the reader feels cheated; end your work as strong as you have begun. Poetry does not call on the reader to suspend disbelief (as is the case with novels); its chief objective is to stir the emotions in the reader. However, do try to be factually correct in your assersions, and display a modicum of forethought about the setting and/or circumstances surrounding the piece.Ie do some reseasrch beforehand. It doesn’t have to be a lengthy piece to engage the reader’s interest, for example:
Dust motes dance like ill-conceived clichés in ubiquitous sunbeams.
SHORT AND SWEET
Micro fiction is a subset of flash fiction. Whereas flash fiction is written in 1,000–1,500 words (more or less, depending on which source you consult), micro fiction is fiction that is written in about 250–300 words; sudden fiction is written in about 500–750 words. These stories are usually concluded with the words ‘THE END’ in capital letters and centred on the page. As with the title, they don’t count towards the word count (per the publishers of these scripts).
The following are categories of micro fiction – these are not genre specific:
1. Skinny/3-word story: A complete story implied in just 3 words.
MY EXAMPLE: Washed windows. Raining!
2. Six-word & ten-word stories: A story written in exactly 6/10 words. Example: ‘For sale, baby shoes, never worn.’ (Attributed to Ernest Hemingway.)
MY EXAMPLE (10 WORDS): Shattered windowpanes – the guilty secrets we never owned up to.
3. Hint fiction: Robert Swartwood coined the phrase ‘hint fiction’ in 2010, describing it as: ‘A short story of 25 words or fewer suggests a larger, more complex story. … [A] successful hint fiction story stands by itself. … [I]t has a beginning, middle, and end.’
MY EXAMPLE: A reluctant morning sun illuminates the gem squash seedlings that sprouted among my newly potted plant. I don’t have the heart to weed them out.
4. Twitterature/Twiction: Prose or poetry – Originally written in 140 characters (the allowance dictated by Twitter per post), it has now expanded to more characters, namely 280 characters (including spaces, punctuation and numbers). It is well suited to imagistic text.
MY EXAMPLE (280 characters WITH spaces – per Microsoft Word app)
Like a badly executed billboard that has letters squashed at the far right hand side, ever smaller trailing off and bleeding down the edge, so my life, however much I have tried to plan for it, has run out of space. Maybe I should graciously pass the baton to the next generation.
TRANSCRIBED INTO A SUZETTE PRIME POEM
RUNNING OUT OF SPACE
like a badly executed billboard has
letters trailing off
and they bleed down the far edge
ever
smaller
so my life
however much I have tried to plan for it
has run out of space
I should graciously pass the baton to the next generation
Any of the following stories might be linked with a haiku/senryû to form a haibun, keeping to the present tense in the story, as well as in the poem.
5. Mini saga/The Dribble: It is a story written in exactly 50 words.
MY EXAMPLE
THE FUTURE OF MANKIND
Cradling the baby’s head, floccose like a ripe raspberry; I’m both filled with wonder and dread.
How am I to care for this fragile being when mankind is hell bend on extirpation? Paradise razed by conflagration – the residue of a charred batch of jam: irredeemable!
I can but sigh …
6. The Drabble: It is a story written in exactly 100 words – no more or not less. It might be presented indented (as per the above example) or justified to the page (as my following example).
MY EXAMPLE
The fog has not yet lifted from the enclave. The candyfloss glow of the sun, suspended above the horizon of the valley where I’ve made my home, reflects on the ghostly blue of the dam in front of the house. One of the nesting pair of fish eagles does a low flyby. The distinctive call of the fish eagle is synonymous to me with Africa, pulling on my heartstrings as no music can. A primordial longing fills my very soul. Banished to purgatory for the best part of my life, this paradise is my just reward in my golden years.
(EXAMPLE OF A HAIBUN BY ADDING A SENRYÛ)
the fish eagle’s call
amplified by dam water—
its catch is silent
Much like haiku and other short poetic forms are not labelled by using independent titles, the titles of these short forms might be descriptive or derived from the first phrase of the piece. Unlike where with haiku, for example, the em dash and ellipses count towards the SYLLABLE COUNT when using an online syllable counter, the title and the em dash do not count towards the WORD COUNT, but ellipses do! These categories of micro fiction do not have to conclude with the words ‘THE END’, as they are by definition short and sweet.
There are a number of poetic forms based on words counts, for example, the Fibonacci, The Blitz, etc. Here are a few more:
1. The Lune: The lune (aka American haiku) created by New York-based poet Robert Kelly (1935–) in the 1960s consists of 5-3-5 syllables (the 13 syllables correspond to the 13 lunar months) and the shape resembles a crescent moon, hence it is never centred on the page. A bit later, poet Jack Collom (1931–2017) came up with the word-count-variant, The Lune, which is more popular today: 3-5-3 words per line representing a gibbous moon. On any subject matter; no reference to nature or a cutting word is required (it may employ enjambment). Punctuation, capitalisation, and rhyme are the prerogative of the poet.
2. The triplet is a three word poem—usually no capital letters or punctuation is used. As a linguistic geometry the triplet may be seen as a triangle in two ways: 1. Each word is a leg, or 2. Each word is an angle. One of the principle insights one gains when producing triplets is a functional knowledge of how (and under which circumstances) words form especially reliable structural bonds; it often enjoins adjectives to a special noun. This put me in mind of the 3-word micro fiction mentioned above. A famous triplet by Aldous Huxley: Brave New World.
3. Gogyohka: The Gogyohka was a form developed by Enta Kusakabe in Japan and it literally means five-line poem. An off-shoot of the tanka form, the gogyohka has very simple rules: The poem is comprised of five lines with one PHRASE PER LINE. The definition of phrase is in the eye of the beholder; it may have as few as one or two words per line, or extended phrases. No special seasonal or cutting words. No specific subject matter, but delicate in its treatment. Normal grammar rules apply.
CONCLUSION
The long and the short of it, whatever mode of expression you choose, make every word count to illustrate the message you wish to convey and the emotions you aim to evoke in your reader.