novels written by poets

i just finished James Schuyler's Alfred and Guinevere, which was fantastic (thx to James M for the rec)

what are some great novels written by poets, or writers who primarily wrote, or were primarily known for, their poetry?

I'm fond of Larkin's Jill and A Girl in Winter.

an obvious pick, but the bell jar

Others:

Pushkin - The Captain's Daughter
Robert Penn Warren - World Enough and Time

10:04, but Ben Lerner, who probably still thinks of himself as a poet, is better known as a novelist by now I think?

But yes The Bell Jar.

Tarry Flynn by Patrick Kavanagh

Deliverance!

Randall Jarrell, Pictures from an Institution

Ingeborg Bachmann, Malina
Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red (although this is basically a novel in verse)

Paul Valéry, Monsieur Teste

Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

I was just thinking I'd like to explore some of Robert graves' non-Claudius novels, and was looking at synopses/reviews. Thought homer's daughter seemed the most interesting, and the one about milton's wife potentially the most bonkers. Anyone have any experience with these? They seem very out of fashion now.

I got the same sense to be very wary, and therefore never read any of those either.

They're quite good if you're feeling very patient for slow reading, but pretty turgid. Count Belisarius defeated me, though.

valery larbaud the diary of a.o. barnabooth
rene crevel babylon
aragon paris peasant(once came close to buying one of his historical novels written during his stalinist period but had second thoughts)

The Enormous Room by ee cummings

Been Down So Long It looks Like Up To Me by Richard Farina
Tarantula by Bob Dylan

was going to say Deliverance so will do, great prose I thought at the time.

Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red (although this is basically a novel in verse)
Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

I love both of these books so much.

Novel on Yellow Paper by Stevie Smith

Should add re Graves that his short fiction is very strong, and may be the place to start any exploring

Larbaud's Barnabooth is really good, yet i had completely forgotten about it until no lime mentioned it above.

stevie smith, The Holiday, is another good one

Poet Sean O'Brien turned to fiction.
I'm afraid I haven't read it.

https://www.panmacmillan.com/books/once-again-assembled-here

Ditto Simon Armitage whose novel LITTLE GREEN MAN I think I actually own.

Kenneth Patchen - Sleepers Awake and The Journal of Albion Moonlight, both great.

Siegfried Sassoon's Sherston novels are really great.

Also love Pictures from an Institution, mentioned above.

I like it too but it's more of a compendium of sparkling aperçus and devastating putdowns than a novel.

Does Richard Brautigan count? He wrote a lot of novels, but his temperament was that of a poet.

loved sleepers awake!

not sure how it would stand up to a reading now, but thought james k. baxter's horse was great when i read it at 16

always been curious about baudelaire's novella

I was gonna say sleepers awake -also memoirs of a shy pornographer

a nest of ninnies by john ashberry

H.D. wrote a few right?

also I've been trying all day to think of a novel by a French(?) poet that contains photographs (not nadja) - anyone know?

That's it. Good choice.

also I've been trying all day to think of a novel by a French(?) poet that contains photographs (not nadja) - anyone know?

Breton's L'amour fou?

Not it either. I wish I could help more, this has been doing my head in all day and I can't get home to look till later

Nest of ninnies is co-written with Schuyler iirc

In alternating sentences, I think, like an exquisite corpse stretched beyond normal limits

Awesome lol

same as Breton and Soupault's own Les champs magnétique iirc

Eileen Myles's Inferno: A Poet's Novel is not really a novel but an episodic prose memoir, but it's one of her most compelling later books, on par with Chelsea Girls.

Are C. Day Lewis's Nicholas Blake mysteries good?

Was disappointed in first reading the original I Claudius after watching TV series' it just seemed like a plodding memoir of an actual political figure, with no good ghost or co-writer, nothing like the often witty, sometimes sad, creepy, stark shifts of the show---which weren't all from C.'s point of view, for instance. Maybe I should try again, or more likely go on to the short fiction and Goodbye To All That.

I will try Tarantula again at some point; enjoyed the postcards, alternating with "chapters", for sure. Like his best liner notes. I like Farina's songs and even his and Mrs. F/'s very folkie singing, but before I knew the word "sexist", as not very enlightened teen, was put off by some of the hairy frat/high school boy attitudes of Been Down.

Speaking of novels in verse---is Vikram Seth good? Others who have tried this? (other than Carson, that is---Paris Review interview already has me wanting several if not all by her)

Anthony Burgess tried it with Byrne, I think.

xpost Been Down: I try not to judge authors and characters by "attitude", but sometimes if you don't happen to like that, you're completely out of luck.

xpost novels in verse: not that a lot of "poems" don't come off like chanty prose chopped into lines and stacked up in the warehouse.

i never finished those Swinburne pro-flogging novels i started...

they are completely over the top though. or over the bottom...

Fanfarlo, the baudelaire novella, is a fun one.

The nicholas Blake novels that were a series were not my thing, but there was a singleton, The Private Wound, that i loved.

As to novels in verse, Eugene Onegin is fantastic, of course. I liked Seth's, it knows when to play up its own artificiality to good effect, and is thoroughly good humoured. australian poet Dorothy Porter wrote several verse novels, inc The Monkey's Mask, which was made into a film. No idea how that worked, given that the actual plot, presumably all that would survive the transition to film, was the weakest bit of the book.

AND bernardine evaristo, the emperor's babe. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/702626.The_Emperor_s_Babe

i think berryman's 'recovery' is a roman a clef? i have it but i haven't read it

I think novels in verse are another genre entirely. Aurora Leigh holds up well; the blank verse isn't as blank as I thought when I reread it in April for the first time since grad school.

I won't bother reopening The Ring and the Book though.

as long as we're going sideways, what about fiction writers as poets? I still haven't checked Hardy or Melville. Didn't like the Joyce poems I read, maybe I was expecting more or different continuity with the prose.

Delmore Schwarz. I've only read excerpts of William Carlos Williams' novels, but they seemed pretty powerful. Being a doctor in funky old Paterson was a good way to collect material, whether he wanted to or not.
The Poetry Foundation's take on Robert Lowell's plays is the way I remember them (on the page, never saw them on the stage): [
The Old Glory consists of three plays: Endecott and the Red Cross and My Kinsman, Major Molineux, both adapted from short stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Benito Cereno, adapted from a novella by Herman Melville. In his introduction to the plays, Robert Brustein says that "Mr. Lowell feels the past working in his very bones. And it is his subtle achievement not only to have evoked this past, but also to have superimposed the present upon it, so that the plays manage to look forward and backward at the same time." All the plays incorporate some aspect of conflict between individuals and authority and thus look back to Lowell's earlier poetry, as well as outward to the political turmoil of the 1960s.

turns out I was thinking of bruges-la-morte by georges rodenbach

That is a very good, very gloomy book. I read the characteristically excellent, characteristically fucking ugly Dedalus edition

Hardy, Lawrence, Warren are poet-novelists, always writing both.

BS Johnson frequently said he thought of himself as a poet, but as he's best known for his novels I guess he doesn't count.

not exactly on point, but an oddity all the same

this is based on a screenplay written by Robert Lowell - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_Activities

I don't recommend watching the movie really tho tbh

the couple of hd novels i've read were both quite good, if not particularly earth shattering

conclusive proof that wcw was the author of the great american novel

You justreminded me. WCW wrote In the Money, which impressed the fuck out of me last summer.

Blanking on the title of the Williams collection I read (in the 70s), but think it was excerpt from White Mule gave me chills.

there's a bit in the new directions wcw reader. have been waiting to find a copy of white mule before reading in the money, though not sure how necessary it is to read the trilogy in sequence?

Was WM first? If so, that's the one I loved.

WCW's Paterson must count as a novel in verse

The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)
Posted: September 12, 2016 at 7:34:55 AM
I like it too but it's more of a compendium of sparkling aperçus and devastating putdowns than a novel.

alltime compendium of owns def

paterson is not a novel, not even stretching

I don't know about that: it's more cohesive than plenty of actual novels you could name, and it has its Ulysses/Dublin influence. But maybe I'm wrong. Disnae matter.

they're books for kids but john masefield's "the midnight folk" and "the box of delights" are classics

i own but have never read his ODTAA, which seems to be in much the same vein except for grown-ups who like adventures at sea

Not restricted to novels: Prose works by poets

Elizabeth Smart's By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept

This Vallejo selected is p exciting on the prose by poets front. Vallejo wrote fic so there mighe be extracts.

Elizabeth Smart's /By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept/

I really really did not like that book

i asked for rilke's novel for christmas

I really really did not like that book

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/feb/21/walt-whitmans-lost-novel-the-life-and-adventures-of-jack-engle-found

I suspect that if Roberto Bolano had been asked, he would have considered all his novels to be "written by a poet". Thomas Hardy certainly thought this way about his novels.