Inescapable Stories: The Infiltration of Narrative into Non-Narrative Poetry

Narrative permeates our lives, often without our noticing. We commonly recognise it in conventional arenas of storytelling, such as in the oral tradition, or in prose and film. There is also a long-held classification, narrative poetry within that particular literary art. I am exploring how narrative exists in more subtle expressions, especially within so-called lyric poetry. Can a supposedly non-narrative poem perform a narrative function? Is each haiku a mini-series waiting to unfold? Can we ever escape from telling stories? Introduction We live in a world saturated with stories, some of which we barely pause to acknowledge even at the moment that we are creating them. We create them to explain the world as we encounter it in both the everyday (such mundane acts as recounting gossip or the incidents of a shopping excursion) and the extraordinary (telling acts of heroism or betrayal). In telling others about our experiences, we construct short narratives with plots and characters and dramatic embellishments, frequently featuring ourselves in the starring roles (Branigan 1992, p. 1; Labov 1997, Online). As the film reviewer, Adrian Martin, said, ‘even the most banal of personal stories is high melodrama to those caught in it’ (2003, p. A3-11). We sometimes do not consciously think of these acts as storytelling, so ingrained is the practice. I am using the terms ‘narrative’ and ‘story’ more or less interchangeably at this stage, though theorists would quibble. For my purposes at present, this differentiation is not critical, but I will need to come back to it. If it does not seem too much cart-before-horse, I would argue that it is sufficient and more important at this point to recognise that narrative permeates our lives and that, as literary theorist, Roland Barthes, states, it takes many forms: The narratives of the world are numberless...Able to be carried by articulated language, spoken or written, fixed or moving images, gestures, and the ordered mixture of all these substances; narrative is present in myth, legend, fable, tale, novella, epic, history, tragedy, drama, comedy, mime, painting...stained glass windows, cinema, comics, news items, conversation...narrative is international, transhistorical, transcultural; it is simply there, like life itself.