For pleasure, these days, I read two kinds of books: romance novels and collections of poetry. They’re an odd couple, to be sure: the most-read, least-admired of genres and the one that most people say they admire, but never actually, you know,
read. I’m not sure why they should be so estranged; after all, I can think of many a poet who dearly loves science fiction (the late, great Ronald Johnson comes first to mind) and it was SF writers who introduced me to poetry as a kid. (A book review in either Galaxy or Analog sent me to Pablo Neruda’s Twenty Poems of Love and a Desperate Song, and I never looked back. Spider Robinson, I owe you a dram of Tullamore Dew.)
When they first met, poetry and romance fiction don’t get along. Remember when Elizabeth Bennett wondered, to Darcy’s dismay, who first discovered “the efficacy of poetry in driving away loveâ€? poets may love love as a subject, but historically speaking they’re keener on endless, unconsummated yearning as they are on actual relationships. Why? Ask Lord Byron, or at least his narrator in Don Juan, Canto 3:
There ’s doubtless something in domestic doings
Which forms, in fact, true love’s antithesis;
Romances paint at full length people’s wooings,
But only give a bust of marriages;
For no one cares for matrimonial cooings,
There ’s nothing wrong in a connubial kiss:
Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch’s wife,
He would have written sonnets all his life?
From this perspective, poetry and marriage are strange bedfellows, and inasmuch as romance novels end in a marriage, they need to keep poetical love, and poets themselves, at arm’s length. They can be foils, like Augustus Fawnhope in Georgette Heyer’s The Grand Sophy, but like Fawnhope, they can’t end up as heroes or husbands. Poetry is simply too self-centered, too much about its own concerns, its own artistry, and Fawnhope admits as much. “Marriage is not for such as I am,†he shrugs to Cecilia when she breaks off their engagement. He’d rather write an ode to Sophy than wed her, especially if wedding her means actually bedding her. “I have abandoned the notion of hailing you as Vestal virgin,†Fawnhope tells Sophy, moments before Charles finally proposes to her. “My opening line now reads, Goddess, whose steady hands upheld—but I must have ink!†Exit Poet, pursuing a Muse; now Hymen, god of marriage, may take the stage.
Another character from Austen points a different finger, just as accusatory, at poetry. I think here of poor Captain Benwick, “a young man of considerable taste in reading, though principally in poetry,†to whom Anne Elliott recommends “a larger allowance of prose.†Poetry here stands for morbid self-involvement, a taste for melancholy solitude. The prose Anne recommends is pretty dry fare–sober, moral essays, as I recall–but the prose we’re actually reading in the novel combines sweetness and sadness and sobriety in equal measures, as though Austen wanted at once to invoke and win three-way battle of genres, poetry vs. essay vs. the novel. (As I recall, poetry and the novel were actually competing for dollars–well, pounds and shillings, anyway–back in Austen’s day. Lord Byron and Sir Walter Scott, whom Captain Benwick loves, wrote bestsellers in verse–it was other, later poets who made bad sales a sign of artistic integrity.)
In recent romance novels, a taste for poetry generally means just the opposite of what it did in Austen. This character knows what love is, with or without knowing the meaning of the blues. Jennifer Crusie’s heroes drop a line of verse now and then–a dash of Donne, a scrap of Andrew Marvell or Theodore Roethke–and it’s always a good sign.
“I like my afterglow with you in motion. I measure time by how your body sways.†He bit her earlobe and she rolled to look up at him. “Okay,†he said. “I just like my afterglow with you.â€
His eyes were dark as ever, but now they were hot, too, intent on her, and he took her breath away. Good grief, she thought. Look at him. He’s beautiful.
“By how my body sways?†she said instead.
“It’s from a very hot poem,†he said. “It comes to mind whenever I watch you move.â€
Poetry, she thought. He’ll be surprising me forever.
Thus Gabe, to Nell, in Fast Women, quoting Roethke’s “I Knew a Woman.” The poem is all about playing the sap for someone, and doing so willingly, tenderly, reverently. It shows that Gabe is no Sam Spade, nor was meant to be.
In A Wild Pursuit, Eloisa James gives poetry to the ladies to quote, rather than just the gents. I don’t want to give too much away here, so let’s just say that a pivotal scene in the novel comes in a chapter called “The Poetry Reading,” and it features verse from the Renaissance poet Richard Barnfield and from the King James Bible’s translation of the Song of Songs. Here we see characters using love poetry as it was always best meant to be used: to put their own desires into words, making the poems their own. (For my money, Chana and Ariel Bloch’s translation of the Song of Songs actually beats the King James–but of course, it wasn’t available back in the Regency period! I posted some scraps from it here.)
If romance novelists have been putting poetry to use, one way or the other, for centuries, what about poets and romance? Sadly, I’m hard pressed to find any examples of poets quoting from popular romance fiction, or even writing about it respectfully. Ron Silliman, for example, uses “Harlequin romance” as a shorthand for literature that aims at best simply to be familiar–at worst it’s “the home of the overripe trope.” (To be fair, he links to Pam Rosenthal’s webpage from his blog, so maybe he means specifically Harlequin, rather than, say, Kensington Brava.) I’m left looking, instead, for poets whose work appeals to me as a romance reader, rather than as a “poetry person,” whatever that might mean. (Note to self: What does that mean? There’s an essay in there, or a book.)
Let me put in a good word, then, for a poet I discovered by accident a few months ago, and have been enjoying ever since. Houston poet Sarah Cortez has one book out, How to Undress a Cop, which Naomi Shihab Nye chose for the PEN Texas Literary Award for poetry back in 2000. Cortez knows from cops; in fact, she was one, for a while, and the poems she writes out of that service are moving, scary, funny, and haunting, by turns. And when she writes sexy? Well, here’s an example; and there are more where that came from. Yum!
Now, How to Undress a Cop doesn’t feature an HEA. The final poem is pretty downbeat, although the one before it is a hoot–it’s as though Cortez didn’t want to end on too happy or funny a note. But as a book of poems to sit down and read, just read and enjoy, this one is too good to miss. If you can imagine a kick-ass romance heroine writing poetry, this is how it would sound, and that’s a sound I’d like to hear more of.
So: any other romance novels featuring poetry or poets? Any poets to recommend? I’m all ears!
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I lack the poet gene. I wrote poetry, of course, in adolescence whey I thought I was the only one feeling. At that same time I was addicted to Richard Brautigan, but it’s hard to find a literate hippy in the sixties who wasn’t — or literate ex-hippy from the sixties who isn’t still, to some degree. (Now I’m going to spend more time than I should trying to find my battered old copy of “The Pill Versus the Springhill MIne Disaster.”) I’ve written one poem I think stands up to scrutiny, and that was nearly forty years ago.
I’m currently a fan of Billy Collins, a copy of his Suddenly hangs prominently in my designated writing corner. He once said that certainty was for writers of prose. The power of poetry is in its ambiguity, the reader should never be quite sure. It’s this uncertainty that keeps the reader thinking about the poem and lets the poem work its way into their mind until it becomes something that is theirs.
An acquaintance of mine possessed of a more refined and disciplined soul once told me that I’m a technician, more impressed by word games than meaning, who does not understand the heart of poetry. I like to think that I’m a craftsman who appreciates workmanship. I do know I lack the skill to make words work as hard as they do in a well-crafted poem. (Though the fact that I think of poems in terms of their construction pretty much makes her case, I’m thinking.)
As for the Song of Songs, you’d be hard pressed to find a racier bit of literature in all the world. Interracial love, oral sex, evocative sensual metaphors (and not so metaphorical) at a dozen levels. I remember Fr. Brokaw teaching the official Church doctrine that the Song of Songs was meant to be a symbolic representation of Christ’s relationship to the Church, his bride. Nope. It’s a no-holds-barred celebration of the fact that God made passion intoxicating and — brace yourselves — he made sex fun on purpose. He expects us to appreciate that fact at every opportunity.
The power of poetry is in its ambiguity, the reader should never be quite sure. It’s this uncertainty that keeps the reader thinking about the poem and lets the poem work its way into their mind until it becomes something that is theirs.
I’d agree, broadly, though I’m not so sure if epic poems like the Cantar de mio Cid are any more ambiguous than prose. That’s possibly why I prefer prose. I find more than enough uncertainty in prose, even prose with a guaranteed happy ending.
*squee* I LOVE the Bloch’s translation!!! I pimp it everywhere I can when the subject comes up. It’s also fun reading all of the translations side by side. Her ‘bowels moved within her’ in a different translation turns to ‘her womb trembled within her’.
gah-now I’m late.
Thanks for reading, everyone!
KeVin, if you like craft, you might enjoy Christian Bok’s book “Eunoia.” Bok is a Canadian poet, and the book was a bestseller in Canada. It’s a set of prose poems built around the vowels in English; each section of the book uses words with only one of the vowels (a, e, i, o, u–the technical term is, it’s a “univocal lipogram”), and Bok set himself a set of topics that every section had to talk about, too (a sea voyage, a feast, a few others). It’s an amazing job, and you can find the whole book now free on-line, read out loud and as text. (Here’s a good place to start: http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Bok.html.)
Here’s a paragraph from the “I” chapter, which talks a bit about the process of writing such a book, I think:
“Writing is inhibiting. Sighing, I sit, scribbling in ink this pidgin script. I sing with nihilistic witticism, disciplining signs with trifling gimmicks—-impish hijinks which highlight stick sigils. Isn’t it glib? Isn’t it chic? I fit childish insights within rigid limits, writing shtick which might instill priggish misgivings in critics blind with hindsight. I dismiss nit-picking criticism which flirts with philistinism. I bitch; I kibitz-—griping whilst criticizing dimwits, sniping whilst indicting nitwits, dismissing simplistic thinking, in which philippic wit is still illicit.”
Eva, I’m so glad to know there’s another squealing Bloch fan. That translation just GETS to me. I teach it every chance I get.
Oho, Eric, that is beautiful. Exactly the sort of soulless wordplay that delights my crafty heart.
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Ah, putting my MFA in poetry to work:
Li-Young Lee (all time fav!)
Nicholas Samaras
Wing Tek Lum
Arthur Sze
Henry Taylor
Thomas Centolella
There’s a line in Pretty Woman that I use to explain things all the time. Richard Gere’s character is talking about opera and he says something about how those who don’t get opera can learn to appreciate it but it will never be a part of their soul. That’s me and poetry. I feel I’ve come to appreciate most of it, especially the truly metrical stuff, in trying to figure out how to teach it so it’ll make sense to my students. But it’s not part of my soul. I need novels for that. I need narrative–a beginning, a middle, and an end, hopefully with an HEA.
KeVin, the consummate wordplay artist is, of course, Byron, especially his Don Juan. A man who can rhyme “intellectual” and “henpecked you all” is worth just about anything in my book.
Take Keats, for example. There he is reading, with intense passion I am sure, “Pierre de Provence et La Belle Maguelone,” a popular romance no doubt, clearly coded “feminine” (i.e. French not English). And then he writes one of the richest modern romance poems–”The Eve of St. Agnes.” Or, from a different angle, take Shelley. There he is longing to serve Teresa Viviani, the nineteen year old girl locked in an Italian convent by her wealthy father and stepmother. And then he writes one of most passionate poems– “Epipsychidion.” What is romance if not poetry? What is poetry if not romance?
I’m not sure why, Eric, but when reading the above it popped into my head that you might enjoy Stephen Beal’s The Very Stuff: Poems on Color, Thread, and the Habits of Women He’s not a poet writing about romance novels, but is inspired by another equally as female sphere – embroidery threads, specifically the range of colours. And while that might sound strange, I loved his poetry. I gave my copy to my mother, (who loved it, too) and now I want to buy another one for me to keep!
I keep coming back to re-read this entry, not to comment but to enjoy. Because (a) you quoted and linked to a lot of favorites and some beautiful, beautiful language, (b) I fell hard for Gabe in Fast Women because of exactly these qualities, and (c) “hearing” a man (er, I mean you) talk about poetry that way makes my heart flip. Eric, I think I love you
But not to worry, I’ll fall for someone else’s love of words tomorrow!