Poem 3: Alternate Means of Transport

From the Modernist era onward, some poets have become increasingly curious about what poetry can do insteadof telling a story. In this poem, begin to try to figure this out for yourself. You might work in fragments (or possibly, aphorisms), or attempt to work without a narrative. Conversely, you might try to bring more than one narrative together. You might experiment with non-narrative aspects of poetry (such as syntax or sound). You might try to suppress or elide the story and see if we can guess what’s happening from a few powerful clues. You might try to find alternate forms of order, such as Charles Wright’s “narrative of metaphor” or Charles Bernstein’s “nude formalism.”