Let me run this past everyone as a possible thread: there don't seem to be many novelists who have also written praiseworthy poetry-- just as there are not great numbers of poets who have produced genuinely good novels. But I can think of a few: D. H. Lawrence I believe is one; Hardy, of course. Margaret Atwood. Do any others spring to mind?

Marilyn Taylor

James Dickey.
Marge Piercy.
Stephen Dobyns.

I'd add Sherman Alexie, although his short stories are probably better known and possibly better work than his one novel.

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

Hardy and Lawrence seem to be two rare cases where the poetry and novels are generally considered of equal importance. Here are a few more names, although each of them is clearly better known for one of the two categories:

Emily Bronte
Kingsley Amis
Jonathan Swift (if we want to count Gulliver's Travels as a novel)
Alessandro Manzoni (if I'm allowed an Italian example)

Gregory

Sylvia Plath.
Gertrude Stein.

Gregory, just out of curiosity, if GT is not a novel, per se, then what would you consider it?

And there are at least two children's novelists who come to mind whose poetry in those novels is at least creditable: Roald Dahl and JK Rowling.

The Scottish poet Jackie Kay has written a really wonderful novel, Trumpet.

Kim Addonizio has a novel out, Little Beauties, which admittedly I have not read.

The writer of Apprentice to the Flower Poet Z (which is a scream of a book) is apparently also a poet, and the poems she used in the book are pleasingly taut and focused.

--CS

John Updike
Lawrence Durrell
Samuel Beckett
Jose Luis Borges (Short stories - "tales" - certainly, if not a novel.)
Vladimir Nabokov
Nikos Kazantzakis



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

Herman Melville, whose poetry I quite enjoy.

John Updike, though I like his prose much more than his poetry. (edited to add: Damn you, Cantor!)

Robert Penn Warren, though I suppose he might be considered a poet first.

Tolkien fits in the Rowling/Dahl category Tom mentioned.

Piercy and Dobyns are poets first in my mind.

------------------
Steve Schroeder

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

Lewis Carroll (more of a short story writer than a novelist)? Erica Jong (gasp!!) ??

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

A philosopher who wrote one wonderful novel, The Last Puritan, and a few estimable sonnets, George Santayana.

Walter de la Mare's Memoirs of a Midget is a strange minor classic.

Robert Graves. (!)
Philip Larkin.
Jarrell.
Berryman.

Laura Riding.
H.D.
Djuna Barnes.
Mina Loy.

How strange to think of George Eliot writing verse!

Robert Louis Stevenson.
Some take Swinburne's novels seriously. (Some take even his poetry seriously.)

Best,
Michael Slipp

P.S. Daniel, I love Swinburne. I can see the spine of "Major Poems and Selected Prose" as I type. I thought the comment above was a not half-bad, and entirely easy, witticism.

P.P.S. This could get addictive. Bill Knott and James Tate's
Lucky Darryl; John Ashbery and James Schuyler's A Nest of Ninnies. I hereby lock myself.

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

Yes Tolkein, though he wrote a lot of bad poetry. There are a few memorable ones, though:

1)
Far over the Misty Mountains cold,
To dungeons deep and caverns old,
We must away, ere break of day,
To seek our pale enchanted gold.

...

2)

Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

3)

Chip the glasses and crack the plates!
Blunt the knives and bend the forks!
That's what Bilbo hates -
Smash the bottles and burn the corks!

...

If we are mentioning Tolkein, I think we should mention his prolific literary forebear, William Morris, who wrote some wonderful early fantasy, much poetry (only some good), translations from Icelandic, and mastered about 17 crafts. Here's a piece of one of my favorites of his:

LOVE is enough: though the World be a-waning,
And the woods have no voice but the voice of complaining,
Though the sky be too dark for dim eyes to discover
The gold-cups and daisies fair blooming thereunder,
Though the hills be held shadows, and the sea a dark wonder,
And this day draw a veil over all deeds pass'd over,
Yet their hands shall not tremble, their feet shall not falter;
The void shall not weary, the fear shall not alter
These lips and these eyes of the loved and the lover.