Thanks, Gregory, for reaffirming Vikram Seth----I really will have to take down Golden Gate from my bookshelf now and read it...

Isn't Nabokov up there with Hardy, Lawrence and Seth as being equally good at both? But then I guess it's a problem that lots--most?--of his poetry was in Russian.

He is in a special category for having novel and poetry in the same book--Pale Fire!

Of course, so does A S Byatt in Possession--but the poems in it are pastiche of a certain type of poem--whether good in their own right I don't remember--I probably skimmed them because I was so caught up in the story! (Dreadful confession.)


what abt Stevie Smith as a poet-novelist?


Christine

You can add to that number

Clark Ashton Smith

who was the darling of the San Francisco poetry scene at the turn of the previous century and who is also numbered among the most influential of early 20th century science fiction and fantasy writers.

With fantasy fiction especially, it's common to find poems in the body of fiction or used as chapter headings.

Kevin

I had absolutely no idea that so many novelists have tried their hand at poetry! Didn't think we'd come up with more than a dozen or so. Although--mean-spirited as this may sound, and with some stellar exceptions--the sheer numbers make me suspect that some of these poems might be, um, less than memorable. (On the other hand, how many of us poets have written memorable novels?) But just for fun, here's what I think is a perfectly terrible poem by Herman Melville:

Old Age in His Ailing

Old Age in his ailing
At youth will be railing
It scorns youth’s regaling
Pooh-pooh it does, silly dream;
But me, the fool, save
From waxing so grave
As, reduced to skimmed milk, to slander the cream.

If any others occur to you that seem equally lacking in merit, please post-- although we might want to stick to poems by DECEASED novelists, for obvious reasons.

Marilyn

If Kevin is opening the category up to genre writers, then there are a host of them in the science fiction/fantasy field, including (just for starters):

H. P. Lovecraft
Robert E. Howard
L. Sprague de Camp
Donald Wandrei
Frank Belknap Long
Isaac Asimov

[This message has been edited by Howard (edited March 24, 2006).]

Howard, another science-fiction writer and poet: Tom Disch (or Thomas M. Disch).

Marilyn, you're right, that's a rather wonderfully bad poem by Melville (though I quite like "as reduced to skimmed milk..."). When Melville is good, he's great, and when he's bad, he's terrible - though always in his own very special way. I personally think Clarel is one of the most under-rated long poems in the language, but even that includes such lines as "A hideous hee-haw horrible rose..."

Anyway here's a pretty dire one by F. Scott Fitzgerald entitled "Princeton - The Last Day":

The last light wanes and drifts across the land,
The low, long land, the sunny land of spires.
The ghosts of evening tune again their lyres
And wander singing, in a plaintive band
Down the long corridors of trees. Pale fires
Echo the night from tower top to tower.
Oh sleep that dreams and dream that never tires,
Press from the petals of the lotus-flower
Something of this to keep, the essence of an hour!

No more to wait the twilight of the moon
In this sequestrated vale of star and spire;
For one, eternal morning of desire
Passes to time and earthy afternoon.
Here, Heraclitus, did you build of fire
And changing stuff your prophecy far hurled
Down the dead years; this midnight I aspire
To see, mirrored among the embers, curled
In flame, the splendor and the sadness of the world.

(The poem actually gets included in Fitzgerald's first novel, though laid out as prose.)

[This message has been edited by Gregory Dowling (edited March 25, 2006).]

Hi, Marilyn. Interesting topic.

My vote for a current writer who is both a fine novelist and a fine poet is Julia Alvarez (particularly for her novel Yo! and her book of poems El Otro Lado/The Other Side).

As to great novelists who have written some terrible poems, I suspect most of them have at one time or another. But, then, most of the great poets have written a few howlers, too!

Victor Hugo.
Hugo was also a fine painter.
Patrick White wrote some poetry although it doesn't equal his novels.

[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited March 25, 2006).]

George Mackay Brown.

He's best known as a poet, but his final novel, Beside the Ocean of Time, published in 1994 just two years before his death, was short-listed for the Booker Prize in the year of its publication and was extremely well received by critics.

Dr. Rob Spence notes: "Perhaps it is true to say that George Mackay Brown was a more accomplished poet than he was a novelist. Even so, the poet's eye informs his prose at every turn, rewarding his readers with a deeply evocative sense of place and history. The critic Tom Scott, writing in Chapman (Spring 1990), was accurate when he suggested that 'His is essentially a narrative-poetic gift: and poetic means his language sings, intones, even in prose.'" See: http://www.georgemackaybrown.co.uk/E...ce%20essay.htm

Duncan

I sort of skipped by Lovecraft's poetry, since even Lovecraft fans are generally more amused by it than appreciative.

Of current SF/fantasy writers, one who's both a best selling novelist and an award-winning lyricist is Mercedes Lackey. Here's one of the big favorites:

"Threes"

Deep into the stony hills
Miles from town or hold
A troop of guards comes riding
With a lady and her gold.
She rides bemused among them
Shrouded in her cloak of fur
Companioned by a maiden
And a toothless, aged cur.

Three things see no end,
A flower blighted err it bloomed,
A message that miscarries
And a journey that is doomed.

One among the guardsmen
Has a shifting restless eye.
And as they ride he scans the hills
That rise against the sky.
He wears both sword and jewels
Worth more than he could afford
And hidden in his baggage
Is a heavy secret hoard.

Of three things be wary of
A feather on a cat,
A shepherd eating mutton
And the guardsman that is fat.

Little does the lady care
What all the guardsmen know
That bandits ambush caravans
That on these trade roads go.
In spite of tricks and clever traps
And all that men can do,
The brigands seem to always sense
Which trains are false or true.

Three things are most perilous:
The shape that walks behind,
The ice that will not hold you
And the spy you cannot find.

From ambush bandits screaming charge
The pack train and its prize
And all but four within the train
Are taken by surprise.
And all but four are cut down
As a woodsman fells a log,
The guardsman and the lady
And the maiden and the dog.

Three things hold a seceret-
Lady riding in a dream,
The dog who sounds no warning
And the maid who does not scream.

Then off the lady pulls her cloak
In armour she is clad
Her sword is out and ready
A nd her eyes are fierce and glad.
The maiden makes a gesture
And the dog's a cur no more.
A wolf, swordmaid and sorceress
Now face the bandit horde.

Three things never anger
Or you will not live for long,
A wolf with cubs, a man with power,
And a woman's sense of wrong

The lady and her sister
By a single trader lone
Were hired out to try to lay
A trap all of their own,
And no one knew their plan
Except the two who rode that day.
For what you do not know
You cannot ever give away.

Three things that it is better far
That only two should know,
Where treasure hides,
Who shares your bed
And how to catch your foe.

The bandits growled a challenge
And the lady only grins,
The sorceress bows mockingly
And then the fight begins.
When it ends there's only four
Left standing from the horde,
The witch, the wolf, the traitor
And the woman with the sword.

Three things never trust in:
The maiden sworn as pure,
The vows a king has given
And the ambush that is sure.

They stripped the traitor naked
And then whipped him on his way
Into the barren hillsides
Like the foes he used to slay.
And what of all the maidens
That this bandit raped and slew,
So as revenge the sorceress
Makes him a woman too.

Three things trust above all else:
The horse on which you ride,
The beast the guards your sleeping
And your shieldmaid at your side.


lyrics, Mercedes Lackey
music, Leslie Fish

Pegasus Winner
Award Year Category
2005 Best Sword and Sorcery Song

Pegasus Nominations
Year Category
1990 Best Literature Song
1991 Best War/Vengeance Song

I think it's quite an Eng. Lit. thing to divide writers up into poets and novelists and ask if a certain writer is more poet than novelist or vice versa.

The tradition here in Denmark has been that writers start their literary careers with a couple of poetry collections, move on to a couple of short story collections and then write a whole string of novels, occasionally perhaps producing a collection of poetry or short stories.

Likewise in many African cultures the writer is often expected to master several different genres as part and parcel of being a writer. For example, Ken Saro-Wiwa, the Nigerian environmental activist executed in 1995, was both a poet and a novelist, as well as many other things.

In Western civilisations we have had an aptitude for specialisation. This is of course beneficial in many ways. But it can also be a limitation in that various fields that have a lot to offer each other get cut off from one another. Just look at the trenches that have been dug between poetry and song. And often an artist who is active in more fields than one is looked down upon as a dilettante rather than looked up to as a polymath.

As a painter should be able to use both gouache and oils, do lithographs, collages et al., so perhaps a writer should be able to use the genre that is best suited to the subject matter. All poets are potential novelists, and all novelists are potential poets. Why limit ourselves?

My favourite contemporary writer is a Scot called Kenneth Steven, who paints and writes - poetry, short stories, novels, children's books, teaching books, etc. And he teaches, does readings, runs workshops etc. There is a Scottish tradition for this sort of artist - the Makar. William Blake is also an example of 'the complete craftsman'. And this seems to me to be an ideal that is worthy of emulation.

Duncan