More on Verse Novels

Writing verse novels means trying to keep people turning pages, while also deepening with what we call poetry. And what is that? Coleridge wrote that prose is words in the best order, while poetry gives us the best words in the best order. His friend Wordsworth tells us that poetry is emotion recollected in tranquility. Both offer a good beginning, but we find something to argue about, too. Emily Dickinson wrote that she can recognize poetry if she feels as if the top of her head were taken off. And Mary Oliver wrote, “poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes led down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.”

“Poetry raises a high bar,” I tell my students. Poetry may be defined subjectively more often than novels are, and readers may have more expectations of something higher or deeper than they find in fiction.

“And there’s another bar,” a student pointed out. “Lots of people hate this hybrid form.”

Yes, there’s that. From time to time well-educated people think it’s a fine idea to tell me that they hate verse novels. Um, okay. You know I write them, right?

We do our best to put tension into narrative, which we can learn about from E. M. Forster, including his insight that plot asks for elements of mystery, which means that part of the mind must be left behind brooding, while the other part marches on. And then we try to tease forth lyrical moments.

At its best, a verse novel puts together poems in a way that makes each one mean more than it meant alone. And then I ask my students: Can every line both deepen and move the story forward? We wonder what makes a good verse novel, and why should or shouldn’t what we’re writing be in verse? We try to create a sense of moving forward, while leaving white space where we ask readers to pause to absorb or reflect.

We want something intimate, but we’re using conventions such as litany, alliteration, rhythm, and sometimes rhyme that aren’t part of everyday speech. John Stuart Mills wrote, “Every poem contains within itself an essential difference from ordinary language, no matter how similar to conversational language it may seem at first to be. Call it formality, compression, originality, imagination – whatever it is, it is essential… the space between daily language and literature is neither terribly deep nor wide, but it does contain a vital difference – of intent and intensity.”

Aiming for what is personal and universal, we’re bound to fall short, while hoping our efforts leave something. My students are courageous.

 

For more on poetry and the inspiration of hollyhocks and Emily Dickinson, please visit Margaret who is hosting Poetry Friday.

 

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