Narrative Poetry for the iPod Generation, Comic Book Plots for Poems: or, Is Poetic Narrative Dead?

Ron Silliman’s blog has a long post about how Ron is tolerant of narrative in film but intolerant of it in poetry. I made a short comment about how narrative should still be celebrated, but it could be that the narrative type transforms every generation – so, for the generation growing up right now, texting each other and downloading scenes of television on iPods, reading manga – how will they define narrative? What kind of narrative structure will they need or want? But in the end, people are hungry for communication, for structure and story, for emotional and intellectual connection – perhaps it may look different, but at its heart, that is why we turn to poetry.

I just got finished writing an article about how pop culture may become more dominant for the new generation of poets…because it is the new universal language, because this generation have been taught to be constant consumers of media…for a lot of reasons. I have been thinking about Matthea Harvey’s Modern Life a lot, maybe because it represents a way of talking about serious subjects in pop culture language, avoiding the personal narrative for a surreal type of narrative, making ridiculous leaps and at the same time, keeping the reader emotionally invested.

I don’t believe, myself, that narrative will ever be dead, any more than poetry will ever be dead – it will be continually reborn in new ways, with new voices, in new modes.

Thoughts? Arguments?