The Pot Holes of Narrative Verse

Anyone who writes a narrative in verse form must avoid two dangers:

1) Prosaic verse.

If the verse reads more like prose than poetry, then why write verse at all?

2) Bathos.

In his essay, "Peri Bathous, Or the Art of Sinking in Poetry," published in 1728, Alexander Pope quoted page after page of examples in which verse had gone wrong, because the writers had used bizarre, extended metaphors to give ordinary details and events an ersatz glow of "poetic" language.

The results are bloated and ridiculous poems in which too much is written about nothing much:

Who knocks at the door?

For whom thus rudely pleads my loud-tongu'd gate,
That he may enter?

See who is there?

Advance the fringed curtains of thy eyes,
And tell me who comes yonder.

Shut the door.

The wooden guardian of our privacy
Quick on its axle turn.

Bring my clothes.

Bring me what nature, tailor to the bear,
To man himself deny'd; she gave me cold,
But would not give me clothes.

Light the fire.

Bring forth some remnant of Promethean theft,
Quick to expand th' inclement air, congeal'd
By Boreas's rude breath.

Snuff the candle.

Yon' luminary amputation needs,
Thus shall you save its half extinguish'd life.

Open the letter.

Wax! render up thy trust.

Uncork the bottle, and chip the bread.

Apply thine engine to the spungy door:
Set Bacchus from his glassy prison free,
And strip white Ceres of her nut-brown coat.

Somehow, the writer of any narrative poem has to steer between these two pot holes.

It can be done, if the writer is willing to economize. Stripping the narrative down to its essential details to remove the empty baggage of most fiction; seeking appropriate metaphors and imagery for the most important moments and moods of the story, while letting the unimportant ones pass by as quickly as possible; trusting the reader to infer the number "four" when offered "two plus two" -- all of these approaches might work.

To make them work remains a challenge, and one that I am failing.