LYRIC
NARRATIVE
POETRY
What is Lyric Poetry?
Originally lyric poetry was poetry written for song.
Time has transformed the lyric poem to be more about expressions of emotion. Rather than express a story they express the emotions behind stories and lives. Driven by rhyme and rhythm, and experimental syntax, the lyric poem becomes a vast medium for expression. But not all lyric poems rhyme, some don't have a specific rhythm and many don't necessarily experiment with syntax. Lyric poetry in its essence is about words used to feel rather than tell.
Naomi Shihab Nye is a Palestinian American poet, her lyric poetry introduced me to everything I love about reading and writing poetry. Rather than discuss the nitty gritty details about poetic analysis. I want to tell you what I feel about poetry. Sometimes there are words that cant describe, like: pain, war, love, friendship. They carry so much connotation and yet there is little in those sounds and those letters that tells you that pain is hard and sickening, that war comes with pain and hatred spews venom on all those who are already weak, but love and friendship are bonds, ties that matter as strongly as there counterparts. Naomi Shihab Nye knows how to tell these stories, to make you feel that sorrow, and she does it with the utmost skill and sly curiosity. Some of her works are taught in high schools around the world. It was when I read this poem, that I fell in love with poetry:
Making a Fist
For the first time, on a road north of Tampico
I felt the life sliding out of me,
a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.
I was seven, I lay in the car
watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern past the glass.
My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.
"How do you know if you are going to die?"
I begged my mother.
We had been traveling for days.
With strange confidence she answered,"When you can no longer make a fist."
Years later I smile to think of that journey,
the borders we must cross separately,
stamped with out unanswerable woes.
I who did not die, who am still living,
still lying in the backseat behind all my questions,
clenching and opening one small hand.
Ironically enough this is one Shihab-Nye's narrative style poems. See how flexible the two terms are!
Naomi Shihab Nye is a Palestinian American poet, her lyric poetry introduced me to everything I love about reading and writing poetry. Rather than discuss the nitty gritty details about poetic analysis. I want to tell you what I feel about poetry. Sometimes there are words that cant describe, like: pain, war, love, friendship. They carry so much connotation and yet there is little in those sounds and those letters that tells you that pain is hard and sickening, that war comes with pain and hatred spews venom on all those who are already weak, but love and friendship are bonds, ties that matter as strongly as there counterparts. Naomi Shihab Nye knows how to tell these stories, to make you feel that sorrow, and she does it with the utmost skill and sly curiosity. Some of her works are taught in high schools around the world. It was when I read this poem, that I fell in love with poetry:Making a Fist
For the first time, on a road north of Tampico
I felt the life sliding out of me,
a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.
I was seven, I lay in the car
watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern past the glass.
My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.
"How do you know if you are going to die?"
I begged my mother.
We had been traveling for days.
With strange confidence she answered,"When you can no longer make a fist."
Years later I smile to think of that journey,
the borders we must cross separately,
stamped with out unanswerable woes.
I who did not die, who am still living,
still lying in the backseat behind all my questions,
clenching and opening one small hand.
Ironically enough this is one Shihab-Nye's narrative style poems. See how flexible the two terms are!
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