Poem and Story

Abstract

Perhaps now we read more hybrids of story and poem than the pure strain of either form ?if it exists. fusions and partial fusions take many forms, among them the prose poem and the short poetic novel. deliberately prosaic, almost technical object study in verse is another. For a while in the 70's the workshops had everybody writing these, but they have been supplanted, it appears, by the dramatic monologue, a danger ously charming form that has been simmering along in American poetry for years. Many a poet casting about for a subject must have been startled at the ease with which a character from the encyclopedia page could be in duced to speak up. It is unusual to pick up a first collection that does not contain one or more; schoolchildren must be doing them now instead of reports. Frank Bidart's work in the form stands out starkly in the midst of all the proficiency. His The War of Vaslav Nijinsky, a 30-page poem including prose passages from writings of Romola Nijinsky and other prose based on biographies, is an example of the monologue at its most electric. It and the 22-page Confessional make up most off Bidart's third book Sacrifice. If, to place these two poems, we were to ask Trotsky's question, To which order of feelings does a given artistic work correspond, we would have to set them with Dostoyevsky and plays of Shakespeare. Both poems concern bedeviled individuals, and personal suffering that is related to but transcends events.