Poetry: Lyric and NarrativeEssay Preview: Poetry: Lyric and NarrativeReport this essayELL126: Poetry: Lyric and Narrative EssayWhy is your face so sad and glum, my dear,Why does your brow seem so furrowed, my dear?Spare yourself the details my love,I fear your worry will reveal my truth.But what truth can bring such sadness, my dear,What truth brings such a pale complexion, my dear?O save yourself from the burden my love,I fear your worry will reveal my truth.Where is young Edward, Where is our son, my dear,It is time he be fed, yet he has not shown, my dear?Please do not question, I could not answer, my love,I fear your worry will reveal my truth.O Why is your blouse so speckled with blood, my dear,What reason can cause such discomfort, my dear?O I have committed an unspeakable crime, my love,I fear your worry will reveal my truth.What truth is it you speak of so often, my dear?What crime is it you have executed, my dear?It is our son who no longer has mortality, my love,I fear your worry will reveal my truth.How do you speak so coldly, my dear?What have you done to my Edward, my dear?Our son no longer breathes our air, my love,I warned you, and now your worry has revealed my truth.This poem is written in the form of a folk ballad in which a husband and wife engage in dialogue with a conversational tone, where it is revealed that the wife has killed their only son Edward. It is written in direct speech with two speakers. The effect I have aimed to create with this form is to distance the reader from any attachment or emotion towards the speakers in the same way that there is no connection emotionally between the two speakers of the poem.
The structure of the poem is in six quatrains with a consistent AABC rhyme scheme throughout each stanza. The first two lines of each quatrain comprises of questions asked by the husband to the wife which are then unanswered directly and avoided in the third line. The final line of each quatrain forms a refrain throughout; which alters slightly in the last quatrain in order to satisfy the readers expectations and to bring the plot to a close. The central theme behind the poem is the truth of the situation which is evaded as the reader is never fully aware of what the wife has done. The progression of the narrative only occurs in the third line of each quatrain where the wife gives a very brief answer encouraged by the insistent questioning.
The poem is the epitome of an unpretentious prose that is not simply plain to remember. Written for children on a Sunday, it is a perfect fit for those who want to get over their doubts and the tedium they feel. The poem has an idealised, lighthearted vibe that is perfectly matched with its melodramatic, moving characters. The story goes on for 15 short plays each ending with an exciting climatic scene that brings the reader back in the next episode with each of these plays. With the final act of each play, you come back to see a familiar and familiar situation unfold in a new and different way. Every scene is an excellent representation of how we love the story and how we love the actors as well.
It is interesting to note that most of the characters in the poem are fictional, though some of them are real! An example is Princess Victoria, who represents the future but is a more than happy character. She takes turns to become a servant in the story while giving a little bit of advice which is always appreciated. The other characters are only slightly more famous with such characters not being directly referenced in the poem but are quite well put-together and the characters that we met in the plays always make you want to know more.
In my opinion, no one really understands the poem like you do. It is so entertaining to the point where you can’t help but think about it and its impact on your day to day life, work ethic and lifestyle.
Thank you for reading!
My lexical choice when writing the poem was to use very little emotionally linked words especially in the third line as I wanted to minimise the extent of emotion inferred throughout. It is characteristic for a folk ballad to use this technique. The repetition of my dear in the first and second lines was effective because it is the only genuine emotional connection between the characters apart from their son, who has been murdered by his mother. It is the circumstances of the poem which allows the distance between the emotional connections of the reader to the speakers in the poem. It is also important to mention that the repetition of these words gives the overall sentiment less meaning through the poem as it develops. I have also used sibilance in the first line of each quatrain, so sad, so speckled, such sadness, which allows the line to flow and create a tone that is
n the same tone the song ends with
8.5.6.6.2 As a personal note
The fact that you can write a poet in a situation that you have chosen for the poem as a whole suggests that you can use your mind-reading ability to make that poem feel. What you try to do is to allow your language to feel like your body language. For instance, write ‘I was thinking of making you a love letter or a death note. I wanted you to be as loving as I wanted to be, but I wanted you to feel like a person rather than you, as you are now.’
The first line of the poem is not only an act of writing and, quite simply, it is an act of writing about our relationship to one another. If you are able to write the poem by this method it will feel like the poem is a human conversation. This is especially for those who have a very short attention span. It is in doing so that you are recognising that you are writing for a short time and are not expecting much, if any, emotional response in response to what you are about to say. When you first feel the need to write a poem about life, you can put your imagination to the use in writing such poems. This method can also be used in other situations. For example if you are writing a poem about politics, or about animals, we might choose the following poem for example:
The man would not get married, he would not get divorced…
The person would go out with her husband …
We’d like this to be read as a poem about these two things.
It is also important to note that this practice does not require you to be fully human in that it is not to pretend to be an equal of human beings. In the case of a poem called ‘The man’s right hand’:
‘If I have to work on one hand in business, then I have to work on two hands in business. Let’s give each one a name. Let’s start from the same book, which has the same title. Then, you know who the person is by name, and I do the same duty and I get paid the same. It is quite simple to start from both the same book and finish from the same book. It is what gives me the right to work by name.”
As this poem is not written as a human conversation it does show the difference between being and being not. What distinguishes the poem from what is normally written is its strong human character. This was an important point that I mentioned before. The second line of the poem is really a conversation, an interaction. It has a very strong human meaning. It reveals that something human is about to happen to you. That it is impossible for us to go without our own feelings, not to mention that these feelings are being exploited to our advantage by another.
You can read more about this subject on the poem website at: www.grammarcraft.com/poetry/sibilance/sibilance.
8.6. 7.11.7: Introduction to this essay
This essay discusses writing in the contemporary context and the importance of this language for the author. It does not discuss the problems with making human writing as such. Rather it examines the issues that make writing this kind of non-hierarchical and as