The Possibilities of Narrative Poetry: A Close Reading of Alan Shapiro’s “Eggrolls”

Published on the Loft Literary Center’s Writers’ Block blog, July 7, 2016

When I tell people that I’m a poet, the follow-up question is usually “What kind of poetry do you write?” Initially, I struggled to articulately describe my style—I am not drawn exclusively to one subject, and dabble in many different forms. However, there is one adjective that does seem to characterize both the poems I write and those I’m most drawn to read again and again: narrative. I like to tell stories in my poems, create small worlds inhabited by characters.

When I first started writing poetry in high school, I was also heavily involved with theatre. I wrote primarily persona poems from perspectives I wanted to explore: a widow waking up on the first day after her husband’s funeral, the man whose task it is to compose fortune cookie messages. As I continued to write and read more poetry, I realized I could experiment with other points-of-view and not always write from the first-person vantage point of one character.

Narrative poems are, in my opinion, the most accessible for those who claim not to like poetry, because they contain some of the features of fiction and drama, genres that are more visible, or “mainstream,” in our contemporary pop culture. The poem I’d like to discuss in this post illustrates the range of possibilities of narrative poetry—how powerful and essential it can be to strip a story down, condense it into verse: “Eggrolls” by Alan Shapiro, which you can find by clicking this link.

The first time I read this poem, I was immediately drawn in by the humor, which reaches its apex in the line of overheard dialogue “It’s not the eggrolls, Harry, it’s the last ten years.” The scene described is relatable; who hasn’t eavesdropped at a crowded restaurant, gotten a chuckle at someone else’s expense? The speaker of the poem reveals that the schadenfreude he and his date experience while listening to another couple fight forms a kind of bond between them, a shared joke. He addresses Harry directly to apologize, certain he must have been aware of their laughter.

Then we jump ahead in time, and the speaker fills in Harry (and us) on what happened in his own relationship—that despite walking home “hand in hand/ a little less estranged” and “making love/ and meaning it,” the romance failed within a year. It’s a surprising and somewhat heartbreaking turn, and every time I read the poem, it catches me off guard, how quickly the smug, seemingly happy couple is shown to be equally fragile. Cleverly, the harbinger of their breakup comes in the form of yet another couple they overhear the same night, in the apartment next door. But this couple isn’t fighting; they are “go[ing] at it longer/ louder/ deeper,” their ecstasy mirrored in Shapiro’s staggered, choppy line breaks, creating a breathless effect similar to panting.

We don’t learn why the speaker and his partner broke up, and it’s not important. In creative writing (as opposed to expository writing), this kind of ambiguity is not problematic. On the contrary—what’s not said, what’s left out from the story, can be as compelling as what is there. The poem leaves room for us to reflect on the nature of intimacy and our tendency as human beings to sometimes concern ourselves with what’s going on in other people’s bedrooms as opposed to our own. Shapiro doesn’t overwhelm us with unimportant details; he tells us just enough to sustain us. The shape of the poem on the page tells the story as well, as the action unfolds in a sinewy column that looks a little like an eggroll.

Narrative poems can be funny, dramatic, tragic—however, regardless of the subject matter or plot, they still need to work as poems. In other words, narrative is just another tool in the poet’s toolbox and works best when employed in concert with other devices (sound, imagery, meter and so forth). Like prose poetry, narrative verse is a hybrid genre that borrows from the traditions of both poetry and fiction. That’s what makes it so dynamic and versatile—not to mention, fun to write.

Experiment with narrative poetry yourself in my Loft class “Narrative Poetry: Storytelling in Verse” starting July 14!