Plotting in Poetry
A lot of what I said about character in poetry also applies to plot. Poetry tends to emphasize mood and emotion over the mechanics of plot, and because of the brevity of most poems compared to a novel or even a short story, there’s not much room for conventional plot development. However, even a short poem, a “moment” poem, can imply events that occurred before the moment captured in the poem, and which created that moment: what’s called “backstory” in the movie industry. In this case plot, like character, relies on the reader’s inferential ability.
Burnt Toast
The damn toaster’s on the blink again:
bitter smoke stains the kitchen ceiling black.
One day it’ll burn down the house
and then you’ll be sorry. Penny-pinching old bastard,
I went to school in the same clothes three years running.
I scrape black crumbs and choke on the stink.
Bitter smoke stings my eyes and makes me blink.
One of these days I’ll burn the house down.
Then you’ll be sorry.
The essentials of plot are pretty much all here, though implicit: characters (the narrator and the “old bastard”), situation, conflict. Since the narrator is a child, or leaving childhood (“I went to school…”), there’s also a sense of time moving forward. The narrator’s entry into adulthood will be marked by a liberating and/or retaliatory act. It’s like a Thomas Hardy novel in miniature.
Of course, longer poems may have well-developed plots. Such poems are often referred to as ballads. “Ballad” means a couple of different things; there’s a specific poetic form called a ballad, but a ballad can also be any song or poem (rhymed, metered, or not) with a strong narrative element. This poem is a little long to repost in full:
This is a classic plot: Joseph Campbell would call it the Return part of the hero’s journey. Cf. the vow of the Bodhisattva.
Speaking of classic plots… I’ll close this post with a link to a piece I wrote earlier, on the idea that there are no new plots.
I really enjoyed this post. It opened my eyes quite a bit about the structure of story and plot within poetry. I’ve written a lot of poetry and never really looked at it as having elements of plot. I basically have thought of poetry as being only about emotion and even though “stuff happened” in it, I was so focused on the event, the specific moment in time, about which I was writing, that I just couldn’t see it as anything more than anger or hurt or euphoria.
After reading this post, I’ve gone back and re-read some of my own poetry and the plots are there, where they have always been, close enough to smack me across the face, yet somehow far away.
Thanks for opening my eyes to this.