I've barely dipped into this thread, but haven't noticed a mention of
Doctor Zhivago, surely the most important example. Maybe Billy Budd,
with its concluding poem, is also worth a mention.
The Argentine novelist, dramatist and sometime poet Jorge Accame
found himself a couple of years ago writing poems in the voices of
several fictional poets. He says it's not quite heteronymic but
something approaching it. Since then he's been working on a novel in
which the poets are characters, and when I spoke to him last he
planned to include some of their poems. Here are my translations of a
couple of poems by two different "poets."
A SLEEPING BOY
Slowly the canoe crosses the marsh. No one paddles. No one
steers. Only a sleeping boy within it. The reeds caress and seem to
stop it, but after a moment of hesitation the canoe resumes its voyage.
In the dream the boy has no parents, no brothers, no
friends. He floats alone through the ripples of the marsh, while fish
in search of insects leap from the water.
The fish break the dark surface, display their shining
bodies and fall sideways, opening circles around them that widen
until they kiss the canoe's body.
The canoe is like another fish, a big fish making its way to
some goal, but nobody guides the canoe and there's only a sleeping
boy within it.
On one of the shores the alders part revealing a channel
that's like a door. The canoe enters and continues its journey.
The colors are still, one could almost say that they too slept.
Beneath the water there's an animal that no one has ever
seen, an animal that lies in wait, taking note of everything that
happens, a terrible and beautiful animal, an unknown animal.
The animal and all creatures watch over the boy who floats
in the canoe.
It's neither night nor morning. The light is locked within,
it waits for the boy to awaken before coming forth.
The animal in the depths breathes deeply and the waters rise and fall.
The skin of the boy is dark and soft; his eyelids flicker
when the waves shake the canoe.
From the shore of the channel a fawn watches the boy passing.
The forest takes care of the orphan boy, the shadows bear
him up and the canoe will not sink.
The channel widens, emptying into a large lake that
resembles music. Silent birds fly over it.
Suddenly for a few moments clouds of steam erupt, as if from
volcanoes beneath the water; they spread sideways through the air and
overflow onto the surface of the lake.
The boy curls up and the steam covers him. Perhaps someone
is waiting for him, but the shoreline is barely visible through the mist.
BENEATH a pool of sunlight
in the woods the good
bones of Robin Hood
repose..
One could say that no rest
is as complete as theirs.
Travelers crossing the woods
can still place
their fingers on
the holes that his men's arrows
left in the air
and hear the whisper.of their flight.
Hearing the whispers of the flights
of arrows and birds
and seeing the light split within the foliage
while they slap the necks of their horses
and fill their lungs with sunlight.
At 11:42 AM 3/24/2007, you wrote:
>Meika,
>
>I used to avidly seek and/or find poetry embedded in
>prose, but was always disappointed--well, always but
>once: P.D. James' detective, Adam Dalgliesh, is also a
>poet whose work has twice been quoted in her
>novels--one a poem he supposedly wrote at age 14,
>which was amazingly good, and the other a conceited
>sonnet that he himself destroyed, partly because it
>was so bad. I have a feeling that her detective series
>will become more poetic now that there's a love
>interest (about which I'm ambivalent), but James
>shouldn't push her luck since _she's_ not herself a
>poet and seems totally unaware of what's being written
>by actual poets these days. (Other than that, I won't
>hear a word against her!)
>
>Candice
>
>
>
>--- Roger Day <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > Isn't there a form like this?
> >
> > I tried this once:
> >
> > http://www.badstep.net/text/poetry/estaury/fox.html
> >
> >
> > On 3/23/07, meikamonagmail <[log in to unmask]>
> > wrote:
> > > Outside of quotes and epigrammatic titles does
> > anyone read poetry
> > > inserted into the body of prose, like in a novel?
> > I know this is
> > > heresy for this list but I find my eyes tend to
> > skip over it
> > > automatically, and on with the story or scene and
> > stuff, for having
> > > to change gear (down or up) in order to give the
> > poem justice my
> > > readerly instincts just can not often be bothered.
> > (And no I am not a
> > > skim reader)
> > >
> > > Does anyone else do this?
> > >
> > > I ask because I am considering some poetic form
> > for some particular
> > > reason in the work I am currently writing (fat
> > alt.colonial
> > > spec.fiction) and wondered if this was a bad idea
> > considering I just
> > > skip the things myself. Is it just me?
> > >
> > > Should I ignore line breaks and run the poems into
> > prose paragraphs
> > > with some adjusting punctuation (maybe trad
> > slashes?)
> > >
> > > ideas?
> > >
> > > I'm just thinking aloud I guess.
> > >
> > > meika
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > My Stuff: http://www.badstep.net/
> > "Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious." Oscar Wilde
> >
>
>
>
>
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