What's the difference between narrative poems and just poems?

Question

What's the difference between narrative poems and just poems?

Answer 1

A narrative poem tells a story, whereas any poem can be any BS.

Answer 2

A narrative poem tells a story.  Like The Charge of the Light Brigade, or the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.  Or even 'There once was a girl from Nantucket . . . '

Answer 3

Narrative poems tell a story; traditionally `just poems' are called `lyric poems' because they convey a point of view through song.

Limericks are often some of the shortest narrative poems; the longest are the epics, such as the Iliad, The Divine Comedy, Troilus and Criseyde, Paradise Lost, The Prelude, Paterson, etc.  There are some medium length poems which are not quite epics, such as a cute 100 page long poem nobody reads by C.S. Lewis called Dymer.

Narrative poetry has waned in popularity a lot in the last hundred years because there are so many better ways to tell stories.  If you are very interested in this topic, my favourite volume is The Oxford Book of Narrative Verse, edited by Iona and Peter Opie.  It is a pleasantly diverse collection from English works starting with Chaucer and ending with something by Auden, I think.  These are mostly pieces 5-20 pages long that can be read in a sitting.

Answer 4

narrative poems tell a story (odes, ballads, etc.)

Answer 5

Yes, narrative poems tell stories, but it isn't really all that simple. A narrative poem may only relate a scene or an anecdote. It may, like "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufock," tell more about what is in the speaker's head than what the speaker is actually doing. But the narrative poem using storytelling modes to get its message across.

Note: a "lyric" poem is NOT really just a poem that is a song. It may use song like elements, but isn't really the same as a song. Further, there are many more poems than these two types. (And some poems combine lyric and narrative elements.)

Also, I have been reading, off and on, an interesting anthology of narrative poems entitled Story Hour: Contemporary Narratives By American Poets. It is edited by Sonny Williams.