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What is the tense ! in a poem?
In literary theory, the present tense is often described as the tense which is most appropriate for lyric poetry and the past tense is the adequate form for the epic (narrative) genre. Consequently, critics talk about‘lyric present’and‘epic past’.Nevertheless, professor Miller thinks that tense cannot be a distinctive generic criterion because quite a lot of poems - even Romantic ones - are written in the past tense. For that reason, tense should be regarded as crucial because it is quite worthy of note to see which relations exist between the present and the past in lyric pieces. 

The present seems to be the most suitable tense for the lyric form. At this point we can draw the first restriction for the reason that especially those poems are written in the present tense which express the actual state of feelings and consciousness of a speaking and self-reflexive ‘I’.


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