I'm trying to find a good "modern-day" poem that could fit a 5 minute monologue? Does anyone know of any?

Question

i guess i should have added that it's going to be filmed with images complimenting the words. Also, music will be added.

Answer 1

If you would like something humorous, I would check out "Revolting Rhymes" by Shel Silverstein. He's taken a lot of classic fairy tales and totally revamped them. A couple in particular I LOVE are "Little Red Riding Hood", "The Three Little Pigs" (Those two go together now), and "Cinderella."

BEST WISHES!!!

Answer 2

First of all, I don't advocate "performing" poems as monologues. The poet's "voice" is entirely different from the playwright's "voice," and poems are meant to be read rather than performed. For example, I've seen a LOT of students perform Shakespearean sonnets when asked to do a classical monologue...they're terrific poems, but the performances always tend to be a little forced and unnatural.

Having said all that...I've seen T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" done as a dramatic monologue, and I remember that it worked pretty well. It's probably longer than 5 minutes, but you could edit it down.

Answer 3

I agree with number one, you should have stated the genre in your Q.

5 minutes is an interminable length of time for a monologue, especially to an amateur. Most would have to be well practiced or spontaneous.

In missing stating the genre you also neglect to state what value a "poem" will have in the 5 minutes. If you intend to build something in that 5 minutes then certainly the poem should have relevence.

If a poem is to be the 5 minutes, you'll never memorize it, but you might try stories with poetic undertones, such as the Illiad or Oddeysy???

Good luck.

Steven Wolf

Answer 4

Ditto on T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."

http://www.blight.com/~sparkle/poems/pruf.html

Answer 5

You didn't say what type of company you would be addressing:-
I WISH I HAD LOOKED AFTER MY TEETH

Oh, I wish I had looked after me teeth
and spotted the dangers beneath.
All the toffees I'd chewed
and all that sweet, sticky food......
Oh, I wish that I'd looked after me teeth!!

I wish that I had been that much more willing,
when I had more teeth than filling,
to give up the Gobstoppers
from respect to me choppers
and buy something else for my shilling.

When I think of all the lollies I had licked,
and all the liquorice-allsorts I had picked,
The sherbet-dabs, big and little
or that hard peanut brittle,
Oh, my conscience gets 'orribly pricked!!

My mother told me no-end,
John, boy, if you've got a tooth - you've got a friend!!!
But, I was young then and careless...
me toothbrush was 'airless..
I never had much time to spend!

Y'know--- I showed them the toothpaste alright--
I flashed it about--late at night
But up and down brushing
and poking and fussing....
Weell, it just didn't seem worth the time
--------- I could bite!!!!! --------------

If I'd known that I was paving the way
to cavity, caps and decay....
to the murder of fillings,
injections and drillings..
Oh, I'd have thrown all my sherbet away!!!!!!!!!

So I'd lay in the Old dentist's chair,
and gazed up his nostrils in despair.
His drillings did whine
in the molars of mine...
Two amalgams, he'd say, for in there!

Oh, how I laughed at my mother's false teeth
as they foamed in the waters beneath.
But NOW comes the reckoning
it's ME that they are beckoning
Oh, how I wished that I had looked after me teeth!!!!


A poem by Pam Ayers from her "Poetry Collection"