poliphilo: (bah)
poliphilo ([personal profile] poliphilo) wrote2014-08-01 10:08 am
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Good Novelist, Rotten Poet

[livejournal.com profile] steepholm  is drawing up a list of good novelists who also wrote good poems. It's surprisingly long.

One might also draw up a list of good novelists who wrote- and published- rubbish poems- but it would be a thankless task- because who has the energy or patience to wade through volumes of dead-alive verse to make sure it's really as awful as one suspects?

Has anyone here read any of George Eliot's verse? There's a lot of it.

James Joyce wrote lyrics. They're horrible. Twee, post-pre-Raphaelite noodlings. I've wondered if he was taking the piss, but apparently not.

Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a lot of poems. I've dipped, read a stanza or two,  promptly forgotten all about them.

Ford Madox Ford rated himself as a poet. I've a suspicion that might be worth following up. I've seen him in anthologies...
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[identity profile] ideealisme.livejournal.com 2014-08-01 09:57 am (UTC)(link)
May I present Charlotte Bronte, poetaster?

[identity profile] poliphilo.livejournal.com 2014-08-01 03:28 pm (UTC)(link)
Yes, I think you're right there. :(

[identity profile] cmcmck.livejournal.com 2014-08-01 11:45 am (UTC)(link)
Spike Milligan? :o)

[identity profile] poliphilo.livejournal.com 2014-08-01 03:29 pm (UTC)(link)
Some of his nonsense verse is pretty good though, innit?

(Anonymous) 2014-08-01 03:32 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah! But some of his stream of consciousness novels are utterly impossible.

[identity profile] poliphilo.livejournal.com 2014-08-01 04:50 pm (UTC)(link)
I've got to say I haven't read any of his books.

He's very hit and miss I think- at least that's the case with his comedy.

[identity profile] cmcmck.livejournal.com 2014-08-01 04:54 pm (UTC)(link)
Sorry about the additional post- that was also me but LJ did something very strange-it said you were screening posts and it did so in French! :o/

[identity profile] cmcmck.livejournal.com 2014-08-01 06:46 pm (UTC)(link)
They were a bit glitch laden and collapsy earlier this afternoon!

[identity profile] cmcmck.livejournal.com 2014-08-01 04:34 pm (UTC)(link)
I was referring more to his 'stream of consciousness novels like the MacGonagal books which are just, well, strange!

[identity profile] poliphilo.livejournal.com 2014-08-01 04:51 pm (UTC)(link)
Ah, right. I don't know them at all.

[identity profile] veronica-milvus.livejournal.com 2014-08-01 01:33 pm (UTC)(link)
Robert Graves. Novels good; poems, rotten.

[identity profile] poliphilo.livejournal.com 2014-08-01 04:44 pm (UTC)(link)
I so disagree. Graves was a complete idiot, but he wrote lovely poems...

[identity profile] lblanchard.livejournal.com 2014-08-01 03:03 pm (UTC)(link)
Kipling wrote lovely doggerel. I love every word of it.

[identity profile] poliphilo.livejournal.com 2014-08-01 04:49 pm (UTC)(link)
Kipling was enormously accomplished. A lot of his stuff is comic but I wouldn't call any of it doggerel.

A Dead Statesman

[identity profile] ideealisme.livejournal.com 2014-08-01 09:15 pm (UTC)(link)
I could not dig, I dared not rob
And so I lied to please the mob
And now my lies are proved untrue
So I must face the men that I slew
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young?

Those words were so powerful I put them to music. He lost his son at the battle of Loos in 1915.

Re: A Dead Statesman

[identity profile] poliphilo.livejournal.com 2014-08-01 09:30 pm (UTC)(link)
Timeless.
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