How much fun would it have been if this column had been written in verse? A column on narrative poetry written as a narrative poem … how brilliant is that? After several hours of trying to get my thoughts into a dependable meter without becoming the sing-song sounds that once drove me away from poetry, I had my answer: perhaps a little more brilliant than I have time for.

For the past week and a half, I’ve been reading “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” and, like the good little literature geek I am, enjoying myself thoroughly. In between laughing at Gawain’s attempts to dodge seduction and marveling at the unknown author’s skill, it suddenly struck me that a resurgence of narrative poetry may be just around the corner.

Narrative poetry, especially the epic, has a long and storied history. From Homer to the present, narrative poems have been used to convey the deeds of great heroes, to act as the great founding myths of societies, to inspire and instill ideals. They have been the great link between the oral tradition of our birth as civilization and what will come in our future.

The reasons that narrative poetry has declined in recent years are varied. It could be the exhaustion of poetic patience at the hands of the Romantics and later the Modernists. It could be the rise of television and film as a popular medium, although poetry hasn’t really been “popular” for quite some time. Or it could be the rise of the novel as the dominant form of storytelling.

The reasons for the decline in popularity of poetry, and narrative poetry in particular, don’t really matter. What matters is that the time is ripe for its resurgence. We have seen, in the past decade, a return of the art of storytelling. Movies have moved away from novelty toward an authentically artistic form. They have begun to tell stories again, to tell grand narratives in the style of Homer, Sophocles, Virgil and “Beowulf.”

Witness the popularity of “Troy.” The cinematic spectacle based on the best of old Greek epics, it enjoyed tremendous box-office success. It revived interest in the stories of ancient Greece, spawning movies like “Alexander.”

We’ve seen others: “Master & Commander,” “Gladiator,” “Braveheart” and “Lord of the Rings” quickly spring to mind. They have been immensely popular, often more popular than any other single movie being shown at the same time.

So, why are they so popular? It’s the scale, the grandeur and the vastness of vision that an epic narrative brings. We are so used to seeing films that focus on the small, the miniscule. Like Woody Allen gone awry, we’ve been asked to focus on our navels for so long that our necks are cramped.

The grand epic narratives offer an exciting alternative. They bring us up out of ourselves, confront greatness and offer competing visions of self and community. They represent the best and worst of us, the best and worst of what we can accomplish.

Is it not surprising, then, that in a time of global and national awareness, colleges have seen an increase in enrollment in courses offering epic and narrative poetry. Students, especially, looking for a view of a world larger than just the Saturday morning walk of shame, have taken to grand narratives now more than in recent memory.

Reading isn’t popular, but the truth is that it never really was. It’s only been in the last century that the level of literacy in any country has been particularly high. Reading has always been an elitist enterprise. But even when reading reached very few, the reading of narratives, the telling of those stories, has always sustained.

So, perhaps poetry isn’t doomed, after all. A poetry that speaks to a wide group of people, speaks to them as people and not as an academic exercise or an extension of the artist, has the best chance to survive the current malaise. A poetry that remembers its roots, that remembers to tell a story — a poetry that people will hear.