Fictive Devices in Poetry

Writers often talk about the poetic devices that make their way into especially language-driven fiction. But poets can also benefit from an understanding of fictive devices and how they play a role in crafting a poem. There are five basic elements of fiction, most of which appear in the compressed world of a poem, as well . . . .

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Character


Almost every piece of literary fiction is character-driven, which is to say that the story progresses according to what the author discovers about his or her characters along the way. It often takes many pages of writing to discover a few essential facts about a given character. Many poems involve characters, too. A speaker. A person who may be the object of the speaker's address. An active participant in the poem's narrative.


In those cases, we have to do our discovering in a more confined space, and we have to rely on illuminating details to reveal what kind of person our characters are. There are a number of risks associated with doing that. For example, we must guard against profiling (just as we do in fiction). Characters who come out fully formed and do not possess a capacity for change seldom work on the page.


In fiction, we generally like a character to be capable of changing his or her ways by the end of a story (even if he or she doesn't change). In a poem, the complexity may have to make itself manifest to the poet, rather than the plot. In other words, the figures in our poems should be capable of surprising us. If I set out to write a poem about a hateful ex-girlfriend and she never transcends that part, that's probably not a good thing.


Another risk is that, in the compressed space of the poem, we might create only flat characters or pre-fab characters who are subservient to stereotype (the doughnut munching cop, for example). Because poems are generally small artifacts, the challenge becomes finding ways to reveal character in only a few words. Take, for example, the poem "The Swan at Edgewater Park" by Ruth L. Schwartz, and pay special attention to the way she reveals her characters--Lorie, the boyfriend, and let's not forget the speaker of the poem herself.

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Setting


For most writers of fiction, setting plays a dual purpose. It is, as Eudora Welty explains in her essay "Place in Fiction": "the named, identified, concrete, exact and exacting, and therefore credible gathering spot of all that has been felt, is about to be experienced . . ." (emphasis mine). Our settings offer up details that help the story to feel real, in other words.


Beyond that, setting also plays a role in how character and plot develop. Consider Wuthering Heights without the moors. The Great Gatsby without East Egg and West Egg. Hard to imagine, right? That's because in each of those cases, the setting is integral not only to the plot of the novel but to who the characters are and what they want.


As with character, we only get a small space to really paint our setting in a poem and so vivid, revealing details become key. Additionally, some poems are almost entirely about place. We call these poems, pastorals, and they tend to idealize rural landscapes (though plenty of poets have written what might be called an inner-city pastoral). Consider Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" and consider the ways in which the landscape reflect's the attitude of the speaker (a passionate shepherd) toward his love. For a more contemporary example, consider Linda Gregg's "Summer in a Small Town."

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Plot


Plot is where we begin seeing the most significant differences between fiction and poetry. Most stories and novels develop on an upward slope. Something dramatic happens (dramatic vehicle) to shake up the world of the characters (ground situation), and the result is that the characters embark on a quest to return life to its normal state. This quest (whether literal or figurative) culminates with a climactic turning point, wherein the conflict is either resolved or not, and the characters return to living their lives (albeit changed somewhat by their experiences). 


Advancing plot often means moving characters around functionally in space (getting them from Point A to Point B). By this point, you don't need me to remind you that poems are shorter and so there is generally less room to engage in this manner of advancement. After all, in a poem, every word counts. What may be more useful is to consider the lyric spectrum onto which most poems situate themselves:


                                                                                        Lyric <---------------------------------------> Narrative


It's probably safe to say that no poem is ever entirely lyric (driven by language) or entirely narrative (driven by story). But any poem you write will be situated somewhere in the space between. A narrative poem is likely to make more use of something akin to plot, where a lyric poem is going to favor images that speak to a kind of forward movement in the poem's progress. These images--a little girl dancing with her reflection in a shop window, an old man mowing his lawn at midnight, a woman in a bright yellow dress crossing against traffic--to convey the larger situation (often metaphorically). In neither case does the poet rely solely on abstract concepts like Love, Hate, Peace, etc. 


Consider James Harms's poem "Field Trip to My First Time" for a narrative example.

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Voice


Voice is another concept that is not discrete to Fiction. In fact, everything you write will have a voice, and often the voice of two projects will differ to a large degree as you try new approaches. (Some stylistic elements will also remain from piece to piece--those verbal tics that are distinctly yours as a writer.)


Voice is tricky. It comes from your reading, your observance of the world around you, and how you manage to translate that on the page. As such, it's one element of writing that can't really be located or developed off the page. As Renni Browne and Dave King say in, Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, "The trick [with voice] is to not concentrate on it." 


For poets, moreso than fiction writers, the most important point to remember is that music is key to a poem's success. How the poem sounds, its sonic devices, are crucial. And I don't just mean rhyme either.


The other important point to recognize is that poems do not use the sentence as their structural unit like fiction does. They use the line. Each line contains its own logic, and where a line breaks can dramatically change the way we read that part of the poem. (More on this in a future blog entry.)


For a poem that gets a lot of energy from the way it juxtaposes its voice against its subject matter, read "To Whoever Set My Car on Fire" by Steve Scafidi.

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Point of View


Finally, we get to Point of View, one of the most challenging elements of writing. Fiction writers spend a lot of time deciding on exactly the right lens to use when telling their stories. First-person. Second. Third-limited or omniscient.


There are some opportunities to be looser with point of view in poetry than in most Realist fiction, but perhaps the most important thing to remember when wrestling with point of view is the question of who is speaking and why? As I often tell students, writing is about making decisions, weighing benefits against consequences. In the case of POV, it is worth challenging your original ideas (especially in revision) and asking yourself how the poem might change if you approach it from a different perspective or distance. How does it improve? What gets lost?


One poem that does interesting things with perspective is Laura Kasischke's "Bike Ride With Older Boys." This poem doesn't hinge on memory of what happened, but chilling realization of what didn't happen, of tragedy avoided. 

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So what do you think, Dear Reader? What have I missed? Where do you see Fictive Devices playing a role in your own poetry?