Secaucus One Day Poem

Comparison of Poems
Coming straight from the dictionary, a narrative poem is “a poem that tells a story and has a plot” (Dictionary.com). We can create a mental picture within our minds with the way the narrator tells the story. In the second stanza from the poem “In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus One Day” by X.J. Kennedy it goes as follows,
“Now who of you’d think from an eyeload of me
That I once was a lady as proud as could be?
Oh I’d never sit down by a tumbledown drunk
If it wasn’t, my dears, for the high cost of junk
All the gents used to swear that the white of my calf
Beat the down of a swan by a length and a half” (885).
The singer at this particular bar has told us of her past. If you go on to read the rest of the poem, then

you figure out that she is a junkie and a prostitute. However, you have to critically analyze the poem to figure it out. Kennedy wrote this as a narrative poem, making the women tell us about her past situations. The way she describes in detail of what happened to her helps us use imagery to create a picture in our head.
A dramatic monologue is “a poem in the form of a speech or narrative by an imagined person, in which the speaker inadvertently reveals aspects of their character while describing a particular situation or series of events” (dictionary.com). With this form of poetry we use a person that has been made up, and we put them in situations to help us understand where they are coming from. All in all, the author uses a series of events to describe their character. The poem “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister” by Robert Browning states,
“Gr-r-r ¬¬¬─there go, my heart’s abhorrence!
Water your damned flower-pots, do!
If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence.
God’s blood, would not mine kill you!” (886).
Many poems do not begin with a beastly growl. Browning shows that his character is a beastly man, which is not fond of his fellow brother Lawrence. It is the way he put his words together to show us what kind of characters he has made up. Context clues plays a huge role in dramatic monologues. Browning is using sound devices such as the “gr-r-r”, to display that the man is a beast.
Narrative and dramatic monologues are similar in the way that they both are not in danger in classifying the speaker for the poet. We can see a clear line on how the author of the poem feels throughout the poem. However, the main difference is that in a narrative poem a person is usually talking about their feelings or about the situation so you will see how they feel off the bat, but with a dramatic monologue you will need to use context clues, and previous sentences to help you comprehend what is going on. With a narrative poem it is easier to depict on what is actually going on in the poem, so I feel this type of poetry would suite me better because having to using the words surrounding the dramatic monologue is more time consuming. (542)