Chapter 9: Narrative in Modern Poetry

Section 1: Poems That Are Imprinted in Readers’ Minds

I. The Length of a Poem

I have heard this saying: “The life of a poet is roughly the length of a single poem.” A poet’s lifetime creative achievement, in literary history, may be recorded—even if it is only one poem—and that alone is enough to feel gratified, leaving no regret. In the annals of literary history, many poets’ representative works that have been transmitted through generations are in fact only a handful. The Tang dynasty poet He Zhizhang has 19 poems recorded in Complete Tang Poems, yet the ones most familiar to readers are only “Ode to the Willow” and “Homecoming Notes.” The great poet Du Fu, in his own time (the Tang dynasty), was not regarded as an important figure at all. Among more than ten extant Tang poetry anthologies, highly praised by later literary historians—such as Collection of Eminent Spirits of Rivers and Mountains and Collection of the Vital Energy of the Middle Renaissance—Du Fu’s poems are not included. Even the Anthology of Talents, which collects a thousand poems, does not include his works. Only the late Tang anthology You Xuan Ji, compiled by Wei Zhuang, includes seven of Du Fu’s poems. This situation forms a stark contrast with the later reverence for Du Fu as the “Poet Sage.” This reflects that, in the Tang dynasty, the aesthetic standards of anthology compilers were clearly different from those of later poetic historians and anthology editors.

This phenomenon of “being obscure in life and only discovered after death” still exists today. Although my own modern poetry works and theoretical criticism, both in quality and award record, rank among the top in Taiwan’s modern poetry scene, I am still overlooked by anthology editors. I fully understand this situation and do not feel wronged. After all, I have always been a “lone wolf” in the modern poetry world, rarely interacting with mainstream poetry journals or influential poets. In Taiwan’s poetry circle, which emphasizes connections and reciprocal relationships, it is perhaps inevitable that a “Gobi wanderer” like me is marginalized and treated as invisible. If I cared about my circumstances, I would not have insisted on playing the role of a solitary wolf.

II. Canonical Poems That Transcend Time and Space

The question of which poems can transcend time and space and become classics must ultimately be answered across long historical spans by later literary historians and readers. However, based on my more than thirty years of extensive reading of classical and modern poetry from China and abroad, I have indeed summarized several “types” found in canonical works.

(1) Reflecting the pulse of the times
Such as the Han Yuefu poem “Ballad of Mulan,” Bai Juyi’s “Song of Everlasting Regret” and “Pipa Song,” Du Fu’s “Spring Scene” and “Song of Military Carts,” Pablo Neruda’s “At the Heights of Machu Picchu,” Xiang Ming’s “Hanging Basket Plant,” Bei Dao’s “Answer,” and Bai Ling’s “The Great Yellow River,” etc.

(2) Exposing social reality
Such as Du Fu’s “Five Hundred Words from Beijing to Fengxian,” Xiang Yang’s “Position,” Li Minyong’s “Dark Room,” Gu Cheng’s “Don’t Speak, I Will Not Yield,” etc.

(3) Expressing compassion for the suffering and the disadvantaged
Such as Li Kuei-hsien’s “Resident Bird,” Ya Xian’s “Mad Woman,” Chen Li’s “The Last Wang Muqi,” etc.

(4) Writing lived experience
Such as Wang Wei’s “Thinking of My Brothers in Shandong on Double Ninth Festival,” W. B. Yeats’s “Sailing to Byzantium,” Luo Fu’s “Drifting Wood,” etc.

(5) Conveying aesthetic experience
Such as John Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale,” Stéphane Mallarmé’s “The Afternoon of a Faun,” Arthur Rimbaud’s “Vowels,” etc.

(6) Expressing romantic sensibility
Such as “Jianjia” in Book of Songs·Qin Feng, Zheng Chouyu’s “Mistress,” “Error,” and “When the West Wind Passes,” etc.

(7) Direct emotional expression in poetry
Such as Paul Verlaine’s “My Heart Is Weeping,” Haizi’s “Fragmented Poem,” Xi Murong’s “A Flowering Tree,” etc.

(8) Touching narrative poems
Such as Ya Xian’s “Kunling,” “Abandoned Wife,” Zheng Chouyu’s “Journey,” etc.

These poems that left a deep impression on me, whether written in realist or imagist (symbolist, surrealist) styles, reveal after careful analysis a common feature: a certain degree of “narrativity”:

1. They contain characters, time, setting, and events, forming a story outline.
2. They contain at least one narrative axis that unfolds a plot, proceeding in sequence from opening → development → twist → suspense → conflict → climax → ending.
3. They possess a considerable degree of dramatic tension that can move readers and evoke resonance.

Section 2: Bringing Stories into Poetry

I. The Superiority of Narrative Qualities

Although novels and drama take “story” as their creative core, prose and modern poetry may also borrow it.

From the author’s perspective, narrativity has several superior expressive functions, such as:

(1) Thematic integration
It prevents imagery from becoming scattered, erratic, or emotionally unfocused, avoiding aimless lamentation.

(2) Deepening emotional expression
With plot progression, poetic works can generate dramatic tension, deepen emotion, and amplify emotional impact.

(3) Strengthening impression
Continuous story-based imagery leaves a deeper and clearer memory in the reader’s mind.

Although modern poetry does not necessarily require narrativity (story structure), from the reader’s perspective, narrative poems are often more readable because ordinary readers:

(1) Mostly prefer reading stories and understand aesthetic meaning and insight through narrative directly. Poems with narrative structure present clear causal progression of imagery and construct a recognizable story outline.

(2) Most readers do not possess complete rhetorical knowledge, making it difficult for them to appreciate metaphor, symbolism, and surreal techniques in terms of imagery beauty, musicality, and artistic conception.

In the next section, I will use examples of several modern poems to conduct narratological analysis and comparison, allowing readers to perceive the differences between poems with and without narrative structure.

II. Modern Poetry Narrative and Narratology

I draw on narratology to discuss narrative in modern poetry mainly because narratology was originally developed for the study of storytelling principles in novels and drama. Since novels and drama involve far more elements than poetry, a process of simplification is required.

The narrative structure of modern poetry should include: narrative subject (author), narrative object (theme), narrative form (genre), and narrative event (story).

(I) Narrative Subject

The narrative subject includes narrative person and narrative perspective.

1. Narrative Person

In terms of narrative person, in modern poetry only the first person (“I,” monologue form) is the true textual author. The second person (“you,” epistolary form) and third person (“he,” narrative/voice-over form) are not the real narrators (textual authors); they are merely objects of narration. In this case, the narrative subject (textual author) is an “implied author” (latent author), who actually performs the narration.

(1) First person: The narrator uses “I” to narrate. This can be divided into two types: one in which “I” is the protagonist telling their own story; another in which “I” is an observer telling someone else’s story, where the other person is the protagonist and “I” is a supporting role.

(2) Second person: The narrator uses “you” as the object of narration. This includes epistolary and dialogic forms.

(3) Third person: The narrator uses “he” as the object of narration, mainly in voice-over narrative form.

2. Narrative Perspective

Also called “narrative viewpoint,” it refers to the standpoint from which narration is conducted. In fiction theory it is described as the “point of seeing events,” namely: “In the fictional world itself, the appearance of characters, the condition of scenes, the names of characters, the occurrence of events… through what means are they presented.”¹ Narrative perspectives are generally divided into three types: omniscient, limited, and peripheral perspectives.

(1) Omniscient perspective
The omniscient narrator is not a character in the story. It is an external narrator independent of the story world. The narrator can freely enter any character’s consciousness and describe their experiences, dialogue, actions, thoughts, and emotions. Omniscient narration is the most basic and common form in fiction because the narrator understands all psychological states and backgrounds and can present the story from a comprehensive viewpoint. It allows the author to present all characters’ perspectives and feelings for the reader’s full comparison. It is commonly used in epic poetry, political poetry, social poetry, and fable-like poetry.

(2) Limited perspective
Limited perspective is the opposite of omniscient perspective. It imposes restrictions on narration (even if artificially constructed), thereby creating more imaginative space for the reader. Because the narrative subject retains the personality of the protagonist, it narrows the distance between reader and author.

First-person (“I”) and second-person (“you”) perspectives are inherently limited. Anything unknown to “I” or “you” is also unknown to the reader. Mystery novels often use such perspectives: the protagonist enters an unfamiliar environment, unaware of others’ true identities, and must search for answers amid suspicion and conspiracy. Readers share the protagonist’s confusion and tension. Examples include Ni Kuang’s Wesley Series and Gu Long’s Lu Xiaofeng Series. Most narrative perspectives in modern poetry belong to this category.

(3) Peripheral perspective
The third person (“he”) serves as the protagonist, while the author remains an observer using voice-over narration. The narrator stands outside the story but focuses on a single character, entering that character’s consciousness to describe their experiences and inner world in detail. Because the story is centered on “he/she,” it is also called third-person perspective. Modern poems using peripheral perspective are mainly character poems and anthropomorphic works, and their narrative activity tends to be more objective.

(II) Narrative Object

It refers to the object upon which narrative activity is carried out. It is not equivalent to the content of the work, but rather certain preconditions prior to the emergence of the work (text). The narrative object “is the thematic material, subject matter, and emotional thought within a narrative work, which are attributed to a specific life background and objective world”2. This is not equivalent to the connotation of narrative discourse itself. The narrative object possesses a relative transcendence over the narrative subject, and in a certain sense, it completes the formal shaping of the narrative discourse during the subject’s process of reception, exerting direct controlling power. That is to say, these creative background factors can impose considerable constraints and restrictions on the author’s narrative activity.

(III) Narrative Style

It refers to the result of narrative activity, that is, the concretely presented form of discourse (utterance). This discursive form may be a monologue or narration without a specific addressee, or it may be dialogue or epistolary narration directed toward a specific addressee of discourse (for example: you, you all, we). The narrator is the direct performer of a narrative act (activity). Through the manipulation and arrangement of certain narrative discourse, this act ultimately produces a narrative style.

(IV) Narrative Events and Character Activity

Narrativity focuses on the events and character activities (plot) outlined in the text, that is, the entirety or partial aspect of the story; this is the core criterion for examining whether a text possesses narrativity. A text lacking events (story), or one whose narrative context is not clear, cannot be regarded as possessing narrativity. Events do not necessarily require a complete account of causes and consequences; they may briefly and concisely describe only the development, turning points, and points of conflict of the story. However, one must not only point out the beginning of the story, otherwise it will degenerate into a “citation of allusion or historical event.”

Section 3: Narrative Analysis of Modern Poetry

I. Omniscient Perspective

〈Ancient Temple〉 / Bei Dao

The vanishing bell sound
turns into a spider web, inside the cracked pillar
expanding into rings of annual growth

No memory, the stone

The echo spreading in the misty valley
stone, without memory

When the path detours away from here
dragons and strange birds also flew away
taking away the mute bells from the eaves

Wild grass, year after year
grows, so indifferent
not caring whether their yielding masters are
monk’s cloth shoes, or wind

The stele is fragmented, its characters worn away
as if only in a great fire
could they be identified, perhaps
would follow a gaze of the living

Turtles revive in the soil
carrying heavy secrets, crawling out of the threshold

This landscape poem rich in historical reflection and cultural meaning, the author adopts a third-person omniscient perspective to observe all aspects of this ancient temple. It moves from what is seen and heard at the scene to historical searching and religious-cultural inquiry, gradually sorting out an understanding of the value of cultural relic existence. The whole poem is not divided into sections; the narrative appears seamless, yet it can still be divided—through shifts in imagery—into: opening → development → turning point → conflict → climax → conclusion.

1. Opening: bell sound → spider web → pillar cracks → annual rings

“the vanishing bell sound / turns into a spider web, inside the cracked pillar / expanding into rings of annual growth” — the opening uses synesthetic transformation of sound into form, shifting auditory perception of bell sound into visual spider web, then through associative analogy deepens into tree rings.

1. Development: stone → valley → echo
2. Turning point: path detouring → dragons and strange birds flying away → taking away mute bells → wild grass → monk’s cloth shoes, wind → fragmented stele
3. Conflict: stele inscriptions → a great fire
4. Climax: inscriptions emerging → gaze of the living
5. Conclusion: turtle revived in soil → carrying secrets → crawling out of threshold

From this narrative axis, several key points can be identified: (1) the author is emotionally moved by what is seen; (2) emotion follows scenery and objects, deepening toward history and culture; (3) deepened emotion encounters conflict (an imagined great fire); (4) an interpretive outlet is found, leading to the conclusion that the value of the ancient temple lies in its once having existed and bearing witness to history, rather than the permanence of its physical form.

II. Limited Perspective

〈Hunan Embroidered Bedspread—To Little Sister Maomei〉 / Xiang Ming

Four dancing purple swallows
two clusters of budding flower branches

Just these few faint strokes
have written what you wanted to tell elder brother
densely embroidered on this thin silk fabric

Such a letter worth reading again and again
without a single written word
folded to less than a foot in size
yet at once sinks a floating heart

After long hesitation, whether to open the envelope
once opened, fearing a bleeding heartbeat would burst out
at the very moment of unfolding

a wide and brilliant silk quilt cover
unfolds into a road lined with flowers and birds
as if stepping onto it would lead home

If only one could return home so quickly
though the sea corner is beautiful, it is ultimately rootless floating land lost

Long-dulled eyes
truly need to be released into the boundless sky of home

Yet these undulating folds on the silk
are they not the vicissitudes of life’s journey

At the end of the road is still the sea
and the face of the sea remains
ferocious

Afterword: Recently my younger sister Maomei, from my hometown in Hunan, sent through someone a hand-embroidered bedspread; no written explanation was attached, thus I wrote this poem out of feeling.

This poem Hunan Embroidered Bedspread—To Little Sister Maomei can be regarded in form as a “letter.” The author adopts an epistolary narrative viewpoint; the “you” in the poem is the sister from his hometown. The emotional trigger of the poem is “seeing the object and thinking of the person.” Because the sister did not attach any written explanation when sending this “Hunan embroidery,” many narrative elements can only be written from the author’s subjective emotional perspective. Therefore, the use of a “limited perspective” is both inevitable and appropriate. In other words, the author only writes about his emotional response upon receiving the embroidery: the recollection of the sister, the intense homesickness accumulated from long residence on the island, and the desire to return home. As for the actual situation of the hometown and family, the author has no knowledge and does not present any account in the poem. “If only one could return home so quickly / though the sea corner is beautiful, it is ultimately rootless floating land lost,” expresses the core viewpoint of the poem. For many veterans from the mainland who were long stranded in Taiwan due to war, this perspective is in fact the inevitable product of familial longing.

The first section of the poem is the opening of the story, depicting the received embroidered work and the floral-bird patterns on it, as well as the message the sister intends to convey to her elder brother through embroidery. The second section is the development and turning point, where the author reads this embroidered “secret letter,” and his emotions and thoughts undergo intense fluctuation.

The third section enters the stage of inner conflict—“whether to open the envelope.” “Once opened, fearing a bleeding heartbeat would burst out” is an exaggerated expression, but within this emotional struggle, such amplification is acceptable and does not feel discordant. It then moves into the climax: “a wide and brilliant silk quilt cover / unfolds into a road lined with flowers and birds / as if stepping onto it would lead home / if only one could return home so quickly / though the sea corner is beautiful, it is ultimately rootless floating land lost.” The author’s homesickness is fully aroused, and the desire to return gradually expands like ripples in the heart. The final section, after emotions slightly settle, returns to reality: “yet these undulating folds on the silk / are they not the vicissitudes of life’s journey.” Although thoughts of returning home emerge, practical considerations arise regarding whether to depart, given the political situation. “At the end of the road is still the sea / and the face of the sea remains / ferocious,” reflects lingering uncertainty about conditions across the strait.

The narrative structure of this poem is clear and complete. Its theme revolves around “the call of kinship,” expressing the shared homesickness of veterans stranded in Taiwan.

3. Focalization Perspective

〈Kunling〉 / Ya Xian
At sixteen her name had already drifted into the city
a kind of mournful melody

Those almond-colored arms should have been guarded by eunuchs
that tiny hair bun—ah, the Qing people were heartbroken for it

Is it Yu Tang Chun?
(Every night a courtyard full of faces cracking melon seeds!)

“Painful…”
She with her hands placed inside the cangue

Some people say
she once lived with a White Russian officer in Jiamusi

A kind of mournful melody
every woman curses her in every city

〈Actor〉 / Xi Murong
Please do not believe in my beauty
nor believe in my love
beneath a face covered in greasepaint
what I have is an actor’s heart

So please, by all means
do not take my sorrow as real
nor be heartbroken along with my performance
dear friend, in this lifetime
I am only an actor

Forever inside other people’s stories
shedding my own tears

Both of these poems take stage performers as their subject; both are highly well-known; both are “character poems,” sharing thematic homogeneity. 〈Actor〉 adopts a first-person “I” monologic voice, using a restricted point of view to narrate its own story, with a biographical-poetic coloration; 〈Kunling〉 adopts a third-person focalization perspective, the protagonist is “she,” a woman who has traveled with a troupe since the age of sixteen, singing opera to make a living, while the narrator is an observing “implied author,” using a voice-over style to slowly tell the tragic life history of this woman, “a beauty doomed to misfortune.”

The author of 〈Kunling〉 is an outsider, possibly once a fan of the female protagonist, or possibly once her friend. The author, as an observer, uses a voice-over descriptive method to outline the tragic fate of this actress’s life: from her youth on stage, when she was adored and favored by male audiences, thereby arousing hostility from many women; later, rumors spread that she cohabited with a White Russian officer. Yet her infamy continued to follow her—wherever she went, she was cursed and rejected by local women. From this narrative, it can be inferred that the actress must have had considerable beauty, and the poem’s main tone is set on the viewpoint of “a beauty doomed to misfortune.”

The author of 〈Actor〉 focuses the narration entirely on his/her own experience, without involving other surrounding characters. The whole poem highlights several claims: (1) the actor’s stage performance is drama; the performer clearly recognizes this: “the actor on stage is insincere”; (2) the actor does not, due to “becoming the role,” suffer confusion of identity; in real life she is herself, acting is merely her profession for survival; (3) the actor actively reminds the audience not to “become immersed,” because the characters and plots in drama are fictional and not worth emotional overinvestment or taking as real.

Although 〈Kunling〉 is slightly shorter in length, its narrative structure is evidently more complete and coherent than 〈Actor〉, possessing a full narrative sequence of “opening → development → turning point → conflict → climax → ending,” and because it adopts a focalized third-person perspective, the narrative subject—events and character actions—has a relatively greater objectivity.

〈Actor〉, by contrast, concentrates on the “conflictual aspect” of the story: stage performance and real life are two separate matters; strictly speaking, there is no true climactic segment. In other words, the narrative scope of 〈Actor〉 is relatively narrow; its advantage is clear focus, without degenerating into a biographical list-like account. The two poems each excel in different ways: monologue form more easily delves into the protagonist’s inner emotions and psychological state, while voice-over form allows a more comprehensive view of the narrative as a whole, grasping the full trajectory of the story.

Notes

1. Cited from Hu Juren, Techniques of the Novel, Taipei: Yuanjing, 1978, p.83.
2. Cited from Xu Dai, Narratology of Fiction, Beijing: The Commercial Press, 2014, p.82.