David Malouf--of his novels I love best the wonderful An Imaginary Life, about Ovid.

Vikram Seth--though it's cheating of me to cite him as I haven't yet read The Golden Gate, but if he's anywhere near as good a poet as he is a novelist and memoirist, that will be enough.

Mention of George MacDonald made me think of C.S.Lewis, who wanted to be a poet above all at the begining of his career, and a few of whose poems are good..but perhaps not enough of them to really qualify...

And then there's G.K.Chesterton.

Christine

I don't think anyone has mentioned Kipling yet.

***

Back to Morris and Tolkein, what is interesting about them is the mixing of prose and poetry in some of their fiction. Though Morris wrote mostly in all prose or all verse, he mixed the media in "The House of the Wolfings" (and perhaps others), which I think was one of Tolkein's prime examples for the Hobbit and LOTR.

For the sheer musicality of something like his "Sapphics," I think one must take it seriously.

Boris Pasternak
Claribel Alegria
Chinua Achebe

A mixed bag, but they wrote poetry:

Edgar A. Poe
Herman Melville
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Stephen Crane
William Faulkner
Ernest Hemingway
F. Scott Fitzgerald
John Dos Passos

I saw Beckett, above, but not Joyce.



[This message has been edited by RCL (edited March 23, 2006).]

What about CS Lewis? I'm not sure, but I think that I posted this (my favorite Lewis poem).

Robert Meyer


The Nativity

Among the oxen (like an ox I'm slow)
I see a glory in the stable grow
Which, with an ox's dullness might at length
Give me an ox's strength.

Among the asses (stubborn I as they)
I see my Saviour where I looked for hay;
So may my beastlike folly learn at least
The patience of a beast.

Among the sheep (I like a sheep have strayed)
I watch the manger where my Lord is laid;
Oh that my baa-ing nature would win thence
Some wooly innocence

C.S. Lewis

Of all those mentioned so far since Marilyn's first posting, I think Vikram Seth is the one who comes closest to Hardy and Lawrence, in being equally skilled in both fields. And also the only one who has written a book that is both a great novel and great poetry.

Just to reply to Tom, I suppose I was thinking that since Gulliver's Travels preceded Richardson and Fielding, it was generally considered something vaguely different, like prose romance or prose satire rather than novel proper. I certainly have no objections to it being called a novel.

Since I've opened up this new post, I'll just add that Graves also strikes me as equally skilled in both fields. I guess that's the meaning of Michael Slipp's bracketed exclamation mark after his name. Kipling too perhaps.

Fred Chappell. Master of the highest order of both genres, as well as of the essay.


Robin


[This message has been edited by Robin-Kemp (edited March 24, 2006).]

Wendell Berry.