The emergence of lyric poetry liberated us from the need to extrapolate a narrative from every poem. During the period of modern art, poetry no longer needed to give any allegiance to the concept of the linear whatsoever. 

Yet perhaps because narrative forms such as movies and television shows and novels are how people most frequently enjoy art, they often seem to expect to be able to extract some kind of narrative progression when they come to a poem. This happens often even among poets. And if they can’t extract a clear narrative, they may consider the poem a failure. If a poet consistently refuses any semblance of narrative in their poetry, they may be considered obscure or, like Celan, derisively labeled ‘gnomic’. 

Words are not merely abstract vehicles of signification: they themselves can act as tones. Just as I don’t expect to find a story when I stand in front of a Rothko painting, or to be able to extrapolate what an Ornette Coleman solo is ‘about’, I can be intensely moved by a late Celan poem, or a piece by Lyn Hejinian, without being able to reword the poem as a specific scene.