Comparing Narrative Poems to Lyric Poems

Alvarenga 1
Tirzah Alvarenga
Ms. Fortier
English II
11 January 2011
Narrative and Lyric Poetry Poetry has been around for centuries. Most often poetry is used when someone is down or when someone wants to show his or her love to someone else. Poetry is basically language condensed for artistic effect. Two types of poetry are narrative poetry and lyric poetry. Narrative poetry tells a story, a particular event, or happening, it often relates to a long story. Lyric poetry is any fairly short poem in which the speaker expresses intense personal emotion or state of mind. Narrative and lyric poetry may seem like they are similar, but there is a big difference between the two. An example for narrative poetry is the poem Confession by Bruce Lansky. In the poem he confesses about what he has done wrong. An example for lyric poetry is the song Thousand Miles by Vanessa Carlton. In the song,Vanessa sings about her feelings about how much she needs and misses the person she states as ‘you’. The poem Confession by Bruce Lansky is a narrative poem because he tells his story about what he did do instead of what he was supposed to do. He starts out by saying “I have a brief confession that I would like to make.” By reading this first line the reader automatically can assume that this will be a narrative poem. As the poem goes own he tells about everything he did that day. This is a narrative poem because he tells about his life and everything he did.

Alvarenga 2 The song Thousand Miles by Vanessa Carlton is a lyric poem. In Vanessa’s song she pours out her emotions over the person she sings about. Vanessa’s feelings are expressed by the lines “ And I need you, and I miss you...”. This here explains how much she misses this person. Vanessa also talks about how she would even walk a thousand miles to see this person. From this it is understood that this song Thousand Miles is a lyric poem because Vanessa expresses her feelings over her love. Narrative poetry tells a story just like the poem Confession by Bruce Linsky, thats why this poem is a type of narrative poetry. Lyric poetry expresses emotional feelings, and so the song Thousand Miles by Vanessa Carlton is a type lyric poetry. Poetry is a beautiful form of language and is used everyday to give someone a smile or even shed a tear.