The narrative poem (i.e. the story of a great event told in verse) has all but disappeared these days. At school we all learn ‘The Charge of The Light Brigade’ with its powerful ‘Half a league, half a league, half a league onwards’ and other poems that just tell a rollicking good yarn, but nowadays no-one seems to do this any more – except of course yours truly!
Such poems rely on powerful rhythms to convey the drama of living through a cataclysmic event and it may just be that the current fad for Free Verse doesn’t lend itself to this type of work.