FP wrote: "In strictly narrative poetry, esp. book-length, what counts I
think
is relentless ACTION. Incidental metaphor should be kept to an absolute
minimum, as should authorial abstraction and moralizing; the one metaphor
that counts is the overall story itself, which everything else in the poem
should serve. Derek Walcott's *Omeros failed (I think) because its dense
metaphors, germane to modernist lyric, stop the action dead. Glyn Maxwell's
*Time's Fool succeeds."
In that light, what is your opinion of Keats' two Hyperion fragments? Their
action is hardly 'relentless'.
I don't dispute your assessment of Omeros, but it is one of the few
contemporary poems that I return to frequently for its many splendid
passages.
I always struggle with these & related questions. I've been working on a
book-length narrative poem in formal stanzas off & on for the past fifteen
years.
bj
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