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?
― flopson, Monday, 12 September 2016 02:07 (seven years ago) link
I'm fond of Larkin's Jill and A Girl in Winter.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 12 September 2016 02:12 (seven years ago) link
an obvious pick, but the bell jar
― Treeship, Monday, 12 September 2016 02:12 (seven years ago) link
Others:
Pushkin - The Captain's DaughterRobert Penn Warren - World Enough and Time
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 12 September 2016 02:14 (seven years ago) link
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.
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Monday, 12 September 2016 02:44 (seven years ago) link
Tarry Flynn by Patrick Kavanagh
― velko, Monday, 12 September 2016 02:48 (seven years ago) link
Deliverance!
― scott seward, Monday, 12 September 2016 02:54 (seven years ago) link
Randall Jarrell, Pictures from an Institution
― The Wind Cries Miri (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 12 September 2016 03:11 (seven years ago) link
Ingeborg Bachmann, MalinaAnne Carson, Autobiography of Red (although this is basically a novel in verse)
― one way street, Monday, 12 September 2016 03:28 (seven years ago) link
Paul Valéry, Monsieur Teste
― The Wind Cries Miri (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 12 September 2016 03:29 (seven years ago) link
Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
― one way street, Monday, 12 September 2016 03:30 (seven years ago) link
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.
― he mea ole, he kanaka lapuwale (sciatica), Monday, 12 September 2016 03:34 (seven years ago) link
I got the same sense to be very wary, and therefore never read any of those either.
― The Wind Cries Miri (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 12 September 2016 03:49 (seven years ago) link
They're quite good if you're feeling very patient for slow reading, but pretty turgid. Count Belisarius defeated me, though.
― I hear from this arsehole again, he's going in the river (James Morrison), Monday, 12 September 2016 03:55 (seven years ago) link
valery larbaud the diary of a.o. barnaboothrene crevel babylonaragon paris peasant(once came close to buying one of his historical novels written during his stalinist period but had second thoughts)
― no lime tangier, Monday, 12 September 2016 04:30 (seven years ago) link
The Enormous Room by ee cummings
― Foster Twelvetrees (Ward Fowler), Monday, 12 September 2016 09:08 (seven years ago) link
Been Down So Long It looks Like Up To Me by Richard FarinaTarantula by Bob Dylan
was going to say Deliverance so will do, great prose I thought at the time.
― Stevolende, Monday, 12 September 2016 09:13 (seven years ago) link
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
― tangenttangent, Monday, 12 September 2016 09:20 (seven years ago) link
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
― I hear from this arsehole again, he's going in the river (James Morrison), Monday, 12 September 2016 12:40 (seven years ago) link
Poet Sean O'Brien turned to fiction.I'm afraid I haven't read it.
https://www.panmacmillan.com/books/once-again-assembled-here
― the pinefox, Monday, 12 September 2016 13:07 (seven years ago) link
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.
― by the light of the burning Citroën, Monday, 12 September 2016 13:28 (seven years ago) link
I like it too but it's more of a compendium of sparkling aperçus and devastating putdowns than a novel.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 12 September 2016 13:34 (seven years ago) link
Does Richard Brautigan count? He wrote a lot of novels, but his temperament was that of a poet.
― a confederacy of lampreys (rushomancy), Monday, 12 September 2016 13:36 (seven years ago) link
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
― no lime tangier, Monday, 12 September 2016 13:44 (seven years ago) link
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?
― meh 😐 (wins), Monday, 12 September 2016 15:30 (seven years ago) link
That's it. Good choice.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 12 September 2016 15:30 (seven years ago) link
Breton's L'amour fou?
― one way street, Monday, 12 September 2016 15:35 (seven years ago) link
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
― meh 😐 (wins), Monday, 12 September 2016 15:39 (seven years ago) link
Nest of ninnies is co-written with Schuyler iirc
― flopson, Monday, 12 September 2016 15:50 (seven years ago) link
In alternating sentences, I think, like an exquisite corpse stretched beyond normal limits
― one way street, Monday, 12 September 2016 15:54 (seven years ago) link
Awesome lol
― flopson, Monday, 12 September 2016 15:56 (seven years ago) link
same as Breton and Soupault's own Les champs magnétique iirc
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 12 September 2016 15:57 (seven years ago) link
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.
― one way street, Monday, 12 September 2016 15:59 (seven years ago) link
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)
― dow, Monday, 12 September 2016 16:36 (seven years ago) link
Anthony Burgess tried it with Byrne, I think.
― The Wind Cries Miri (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 12 September 2016 16:37 (seven years ago) link
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.
― dow, Monday, 12 September 2016 16:40 (seven years ago) link
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.
― dow, Monday, 12 September 2016 16:43 (seven years ago) link
i never finished those Swinburne pro-flogging novels i started...
they are completely over the top though. or over the bottom...
― scott seward, Monday, 12 September 2016 17:03 (seven years ago) link
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.
― I hear from this arsehole again, he's going in the river (James Morrison), Tuesday, 13 September 2016 00:18 (seven years ago) link
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.
― I hear from this arsehole again, he's going in the river (James Morrison), Tuesday, 13 September 2016 00:22 (seven years ago) link
AND bernardine evaristo, the emperor's babe. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/702626.The_Emperor_s_Babe
― I hear from this arsehole again, he's going in the river (James Morrison), Tuesday, 13 September 2016 00:23 (seven years ago) link
i think berryman's 'recovery' is a roman a clef? i have it but i haven't read it
― j., Tuesday, 13 September 2016 01:57 (seven years ago) link
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.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 13 September 2016 01:59 (seven years ago) link
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.
― dow, Tuesday, 13 September 2016 03:05 (seven years ago) link
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.
― dow, Tuesday, 13 September 2016 03:25 (seven years ago) link
turns out I was thinking of bruges-la-morte by georges rodenbach
― meh 😐 (wins), Tuesday, 13 September 2016 06:27 (seven years ago) link
That is a very good, very gloomy book. I read the characteristically excellent, characteristically fucking ugly Dedalus edition
― I hear from this arsehole again, he's going in the river (James Morrison), Tuesday, 13 September 2016 10:21 (seven years ago) link
Hardy, Lawrence, Warren are poet-novelists, always writing both.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 13 September 2016 10:30 (seven years ago) link
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.
― emil.y, Tuesday, 13 September 2016 12:47 (seven years ago) link
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
― johnny crunch, Tuesday, 13 September 2016 13:05 (seven years ago) link
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
― no lime tangier, Tuesday, 13 September 2016 22:49 (seven years ago) link
You justreminded me. WCW wrote In the Money, which impressed the fuck out of me last summer.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 13 September 2016 22:52 (seven years ago) link
Blanking on the title of the Williams collection I read (in the 70s), but think it was excerpt from White Mule gave me chills.
― dow, Tuesday, 13 September 2016 23:23 (seven years ago) link
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?
― no lime tangier, Tuesday, 13 September 2016 23:29 (seven years ago) link
Was WM first? If so, that's the one I loved.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 14 September 2016 00:15 (seven years ago) link
WCW's Paterson must count as a novel in verse
― I hear from this arsehole again, he's going in the river (James Morrison), Wednesday, 14 September 2016 01:47 (seven years ago) link
The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)Posted: September 12, 2016 at 7:34:55 AMI like it too but it's more of a compendium of sparkling aperçus and devastating putdowns than a novel.
alltime compendium of owns def
― lag∞n, Wednesday, 14 September 2016 03:21 (seven years ago) link
paterson is not a novel, not even stretching
― j., Wednesday, 14 September 2016 17:23 (seven years ago) link
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.
― I hear from this arsehole again, he's going in the river (James Morrison), Thursday, 15 September 2016 00:14 (seven years ago) link
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
― mark s, Thursday, 15 September 2016 10:33 (seven years ago) link
Not restricted to novels: Prose works by poets
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 15 September 2016 22:11 (seven years ago) link
Elizabeth Smart's By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept
― by the light of the burning Citroën, Saturday, 17 September 2016 18:57 (seven years ago) link
This Vallejo selected is p exciting on the prose by poets front. Vallejo wrote fic so there mighe be extracts.
― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 17 September 2016 20:25 (seven years ago) link
Elizabeth Smart's /By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept/
― How I Wrote Plastic Bertrand (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 24 December 2016 15:35 (seven years ago) link
I really really did not like that book
― I hear from this arsehole again, he's going in the river (James Morrison), Sunday, 25 December 2016 00:50 (seven years ago) link
i asked for rilke's novel for christmas
― k3vin k., Sunday, 25 December 2016 01:43 (seven years ago) link
― How I Wrote Plastic Bertrand (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 25 December 2016 02:14 (seven years ago) link
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/feb/21/walt-whitmans-lost-novel-the-life-and-adventures-of-jack-engle-found
― flopson, Tuesday, 21 February 2017 14:50 (seven years ago) link
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.
― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless), Tuesday, 21 February 2017 17:37 (seven years ago) link