ABSTRACT
Many poems tell stories. The epic poems such as The Iliad and The Odyssey and The Aeneid upon which a substantial amount of Western literature is based represent storytelling on a grand scale. Although poets nowadays have by no means ceased writing book-length, narrative poems, they tend to tell many of their stories in a page or two. (1) It is a remarkable ability of poetry that it can turn anything into a story, for poetry can dwell so fully on the texture of any experience that the texture becomes a story in its own right. Also, thanks to rhythm, metaphor, sound, line, and stanza, poetry can proceed in many directions at the same time. From line to line it can jump among minds, moments, eras, details, images, and geographies like an intergalactic cricket. Prose patiently assembles sentences that form a narrative; poetry creates narratives as it darts and leaps, snowballs and spirals, rambles and hurdles. Poetry can link anything to anything.
