Agha Shahid Ali: The Dramatic Monologue (January 1999)

In this class, Agha Shahid Ali proposes the dramatic monologue as an alternative to the more conventional lyric poem; it provides, he argues, a way to speak out of the deepest parts of oneself by giving voice to an imagined character. Crucial to the dramatic monologue, Ali suggests, is its sense of theater—an other whom the speaker addresses, a scene in which that address occurs. Ali looks at poems by Browning, Arnold, Eliot, Plath and Merrill, and at a poem of his own, to explore the form’s challenges and possibilities.