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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/43354
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/43354
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

You have been misinformed: _The Lord of the Rings_ doesn't have short poems at the start of each chapter. _The Lord of the Rings_ has poems of various length (up to several pages long), when characters sing, recite poems, or find them written somewhere.

Characters may sing on varied occasions: there are walking songs and bathing songs, there are elegies for the dead and lays sung to tell a tale. Verse may be recited, etc. **Whenever the narrator says a character sings, or recites poetry, or encounters verse in some other form, the verse is right there.** It's as simple as that - **the verse is as much a part of the narrative as any bit of dialogue.**

Such use of poetry is quite common in literature, if the author can write poetry.

@Rasdashan mentions _Dr. Zhivago_ in a comment. Boris Pasternak uses a different approach: while the main character is a poet, only snippets of verse appear within the narration. Instead, a collection of verse "written by the character" is appended to the book. That approach is more meta, keeping up the pretence that the character is a real person.

And of course there is the separate form of writing a novel entirely in verse. Such were the ancient sagas, such as _Beowulf_ and the _Iliad_, medieval works such as _El Cantar de Mio Cid_ and _The Song of Roland_, and more modern novels in verse, such as Alexander Pushkin's _Yevgeniy Onegin_.

Original score: 5