ABSTRACT
Having argued that non-narrative, lyric poetry does different work from narrative, we continue to illustrate this formally through eight aspects: (i) character, achieved through approaching subjects “slantwise”; (ii) intensity, depth, and brevity with focus on particulars; (iii) epiphany or sudden insight; (iv) use of metaphors, with focus on invention and expansion; (v) subjectivity and confession stressing emotion, mood and passion, or embrace of affect; (vi) tolerance of ambiguity embracing empathy; (vii) beauty (privileging quality over quantity, and form over function or the purely instrumental); and (viii) orientation to here-and-now space and place rather than there-and-then time. Poets as varied as Bahar Orang, Peter Redgrove, Danielle Ofri, Anne Michaels, William Carlos Williams, Keats, Emily Dickinson, William Butler Yeats, Shakespeare, Anne Sexton, and Mimi Khalvati come along for the demonstration. The work of Canadian psychiatrist Laurence Kirmayer gets an honoured place in our own thinking as a groundbreaking voice.
