When Prose Becomes Poetry
I must admit (sorry, Casey) that I'm not a big poetry fan (other than the big epics: The Iliad, The Aenied, The Inferno). But most modern poetry is so vague and abstract that I find it more irritating than edifying. I read some of it, but it feels more like work than pleasure.
On the other hand, I love prose that has a poetic feel to it. I was reminded of this when I recently finished C. S. Lewis's The Four Loves. Those who claim that Lewis was not a great writer should read or re-read this book. While very much prose, it has the flow, the beauty, and the feel of poetry. I was often struck by the poetic phrases and flourishes, but it was all within the framework of a logical narrative. Sort of the best of both worlds. Here's an example:
To love is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to be sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket--safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable."
Another of this type of book (I repeat myself once again) is Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop:
The sky was as full of motion and change as the desert beneath it was monotonous and still,--and there was so much sky, more than at sea, more than anywhere else in the world. The plain was there, under one's feet, but what one saw when one looked about was that brilliant blue world of stinging air and moving cloud. Even the mountains were mere ant-hills under it. Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth was the roof of the sky.
Likewise Marilynne Robinson's Gilead:
“Every day is holy, but the Sabbath is set apart so that the holiness of time can be experienced.”
Dickens wrote set-pieces in his big novels that were positively poetic. Mark Helprin, at his best, can pull it off.
So, Ricochetti, does this make sense? What are your favorite prose works that are also poetic?
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Comments:
Oct '10
Re: When Prose Becomes Poetry
A favorite book of mine is Far Tortuga by Peter Matthiessen and though it is self-consciously poetic, it lives up to its pretensions. I recommend it as a moving story very well told. If you have any love for the Caribbean, it's a must.
Jun '10
Re: When Prose Becomes Poetry
And we have the extended scene in which Gussie Fink-Nottle awards the school prizes at the Market Snodsbury Grammar School (while drunk). That was Wodehouse ascending his poetic Mt. Everest.
Oct '10
Re: When Prose Becomes Poetry
I used to have The Four Loves and read it repeatedly in my late teens and early twenties. It is a wonderful book. The section on friendship made the deepest impression on me and I regret I haven't had it around for the son still at home to look into. I'm going to order a copy.
Edited on February 21, 2013 at 6:36pmJul '11
Re: When Prose Becomes Poetry
Does Isaiah 53 count? KJV, of course.
-E
Jul '12
Re: When Prose Becomes Poetry
The poems I enjoy most are those that cleverly and beautifully express ideas and at the same time invoke an emotional response (an internal reward for me the reader - if that makes sense) and the prose writers who consistently provide that emotional component/reward, for me, are James Agee, William Maxwell, and Thornton Wilder.
Edited on February 21, 2013 at 6:47pmOct '10
Re: When Prose Becomes Poetry
tabula rasa
And we have the extended scene in which Gussie Fink-Nottle awards the school prizes at the Market Snodsbury Grammar School (while drunk). That was Wodehouse ascending his poetic Mt. Everest.
That was the perfect intersection of humor, character development and ideal phrasing. I am a Blanding's man, but I agree, that was his Everest.
He did have a handful of short stories and a surprising number of scenes in other novels that approached that altitude (K2?). The section in Summer Lightning where Baxter hides under the bed is somewhere up there.
Jun '10
Re: When Prose Becomes Poetry
CandE: Does Isaiah 53 count? KJV, of course.
-E · 37 minutes ago
I think Isaiah was actually written in poetic form (help: Bible scholars), but, prose or poetry, Isaiah 53 is about as good as it gets.
Wait. The judges have ruled: It counts!
Jul '11
Re: When Prose Becomes Poetry
tabula rasa
CandE: Does Isaiah 53 count? KJV, of course.
-E · 37 minutes ago
I think Isaiah was actually written in poetic form (help: Bible scholars), but, prose or poetry, Isaiah 53 is about as good as it gets.
Wait. The judges have ruled: It counts! · 26 minutes ago
Just in case it didn't, the Gospel of John would be a good alternate. I'm 99% sure that it wasn't originally written as poetry.
-E
Nov '10
Re: When Prose Becomes Poetry
Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, “I find no pleasure in them”—before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars grow dark, and the clouds return after the rain; when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men stoop, when the grinders cease because they are few, and those looking through the windows grow dim; when the doors to the street are closed and the sound of grinding fades; when men rise up at the sound of birds, but all their songs grow faint; when men are afraid of heights and of dangers in the streets; when the almond tree blossoms and the grasshopper drags himself along and desire no longer is stirred. Then man goes to his eternal home and mourners go about the streets. Remember him—before the silver cord is severed, or the golden bowl is broken; before the pitcher is shattered at the spring, or the wheel broken at the well, and the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.
Nov '10
Re: When Prose Becomes Poetry
Ecc. 12:1-7
I'm also fond of Isaiah 53 and the entire Gospel of John, with special emphasis on the first half of Chapter 1. I Cor. 13 deserves honourable mention.
Particularly remarkable is that none of these were written in English. Their natural poetry abides in the flow of ideas and images and is robust enough to speak across a time span of two millennia and transposition into radically different cultures and languages.
I became intrigued by Muslim apologetic claims about the incredibly beautiful poetry found in the Qur'an, so I began searching the book for lovely passages that might illustrate it, and ... I must say I was deeply disappointed. I found a couple of murmers of beauty, but mostly stark, brutish writing that in its best moments had a bit of gangsta rap vibe to them, sans the complex rhythm and rhyme. If there is great poetry there, unlike its biblical counterpart, it's unlikely to be appreciated in any language but the original.
Dec '12
Re: When Prose Becomes Poetry
Mark Helprin: Winter's Tale, Soldier of the Grat War, In Sunshine and In Shadow (his latest). Poetic from word one.
Winter's Tale is my desert-island book, if I could only take one.
Jul '12
Re: When Prose Becomes Poetry
To be fair, the reason the KJV English Bible is so wonderful (besides the beauty and elegance of its language) is its enormous cultural significance to English speakers. There are several (almost all) contemporary English translations that are severely lacking in my mind. To translate something like the Q'uran from its original (and no doubt beautifully rendered Arabic) into contemporary English is asking quite a bit. In my opinion.
Oct '10
Re: When Prose Becomes Poetry
RushBabe49: Mark Helprin: Winter's Tale, Soldier of the Grat War, In Sunshine and In Shadow (his latest). Poetic from word one.
Winter's Tale is my desert-island book, if I could only take one.
I saw an interview with the sci-fi writer John Scalci that this was his desert island book. Not that I'm a fan of his, having read only a few pages of his work. But it stuck in my mind.
Edited on February 22, 2013 at 3:55amJul '11
Re: When Prose Becomes Poetry
“He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road
Jul '11
Re: When Prose Becomes Poetry
We did this one in my book club a year ago. I enjoyed it for those reasons especially. Some aspects were bothersome but not the writing, it was just beautiful.
Oct '10
Re: When Prose Becomes Poetry
DocJay
We did this one in my book club a year ago. I enjoyed it for those reasons especially. Some aspects were bothersome but not the writing, it was just beautiful. · 18 minutes ago
The writing is truly beautiful. What aspects bothered you? The portrayal of Jamaicans isn't politically correct, but I gather from friends that lived in the Caymans that it accurately portrays the Caymanian attitude. There's no question that they are the bad boys of the Caribbean.
Mar '12
Re: When Prose Becomes Poetry
The Life of Christ by Fulton Sheen - the man wrote as beautifully as he spoke.
Story of a Soul the sutobiography of Ste. Therese of The Child Jesus (aka St. Therese of Lysieux) - she writes with the innocence and fervor that is compelling.
Apr '11
Re: When Prose Becomes Poetry
Persuasion, Wentworth's letter to Anne:
"I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone forever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others."
Sure beats "hey baby, let's get back together."
Jun '10
Re: When Prose Becomes Poetry
RushBabe49: Mark Helprin: Winter's Tale, Soldier of the Grat War, In Sunshine and In Shadow (his latest). Poetic from word one.
Winter's Tale is my desert-island book, if I could only take one. · 1 hour ago
You and Drew in Wisconsin need to talk. He's a big Helprin and Winter's Tale fan. Although it is an odd book, I love Freddie and Fredericka. A wonderful story of love between a husband and a wife.
Edited on February 21, 2013 at 10:44pmJun '10
Re: When Prose Becomes Poetry
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road · 1 hour ago
I really liked The Road, but the McCarthy book that sings like poetry for me is All the Pretty Horses. The man can write.