Narration and lyricism are not antagonistic, not reactionary to lyricism, and never have been. Like lyricism, it is a way, means and strategy of poetry, not an end.
"I want to express my feelings, but life forces me to tell them." (Zhang Zhihao's Poems at the End of the Year) Can it be asserted that the first problem is the present "life" (reality), not just poetry? Because "life, the premise and background of writing" (Sun). And everyone's writing must be faithful to their own "life", to be precise, to the reality they feel or think in their own eyes. This reality should be complex, contradictory, changeable, concrete, detailed and vivid. In this way, one-dimensional subjective lyric is obviously not enough to bear this reality. In order to enhance the bearing capacity of poetry, we must expand the breadth and inclusiveness of poetry texts, and we must turn from pure metaphysics to metaphysics, from simple and abstract soul things to image expansion in daily life such as eating, drinking and sleeping. The choice or appearance of narrative just solves this problem. In addition, "infiltrating a certain degree of narrative into poetry will help us get rid of absolute emotion and proverbial writing, maintain the inherent fuzziness and multiple possibilities in life situations, make poetry more lively and spiritual, and have a true and reducible sense of the present, so that our words can be deeply rooted in life experience." (Zhang Jun's Narrative Control of Contemporary Poetry)
Narration seems to have become the dominant or powerful force of contemporary poetry (if there is dominance and guidance, there are strengths and weaknesses). But whether it is dominant or strong, it can't be said to be popular, but it can only prove to be effective. It is precisely because of its effectiveness that it has been adopted by many poets. There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, the narrative of poetry is nothing new. As long as you browse the poems translated by foreign countries, you will know that the works of some poets such as robert penn warren (1905- 1994) are mostly highly narrative. Although lyricism is the root and tradition of China's poems, it does not mean that China's poems are not narrative, such as Qu Yuan's Li Sao, and some poets such as Li Bai and Du Fu never lack narrative. Even Zhang, a poet in the Tang Dynasty, wrote a beautiful poem "Moonlit Night on a Spring River", in which the narrative elements are very obvious. For example, "whose boat is flat tonight/where is the lovesick moon building/wandering without a moon on the poor building/leaving the mirror table/jade curtain can't be rolled up/can't be brushed back on the anvil". It is precisely because of the introduction of narrative that the authenticity of details is increased, and a thoughtful female image emerges from the paper. As early as the 1920s and 1930s, some poets and writers, such as Hu Shi and Mao Dun, also paid attention to the narrative problems of poetry, and made some useful attempts in theoretical propositions and poetry texts.
A new poem is not an essay. This is a kind of worry. The influx of narrative poems makes this worry more likely, or worse. But I think this kind of worry is sometimes unnecessary, especially in front of excellent poets or excellent poetry texts. For example, my father and I walked side by side/we had a short rest in the autumn rain/we were separated from the previous rain for many years//we walked in the interval between rain and rain/our shoulders were clearly close together/but we didn't have a word to say//we just came out from home/so we didn't have a word to say/this was caused by living together for a long time//. But this is a kind of soul approach/awe-inspiring/familiar street/familiar people should raise their hands/my father and I walk peacefully with unspeakable kindness. " Clean language and direct narration present the subtle relationship and true feelings between father and son in daily life in a very detailed and touching way, just like what happened to each of us. The intensity and tension of poetry are far from what an essay can achieve. Another example is Heaney's Mid-Term Vacation. Every sentence is narrative and realistic. It seems to be scattered, but the life or the trance and emptiness of life in the poem makes people tremble secretly after reading it. If you change to prose, I doubt whether you can achieve this effect.
Nature, whether narrative or lyrical, has a problem of degree. How to control it? How to avoid flat narration? How to make narrative poems not give readers a more prose-like impression? On the one hand, this is a technical problem, on the other hand, it also depends on a poet's cognitive ability of things. In a word, it is a question of mastering the ability of poetry.