Kaitlin
Keller, our PQ intern, shares insight
regarding the novel in verse and her accidental discovery of this genre.
The
Novel in Verse
by
Kaitlin Keller
What is a novel
in verse?
Have
you ever heard of the term “novel in verse?” I hadn’t two years ago when I
started writing my own. After all, it’s not a common term—it has no shelf
talker at Barnes & Noble, no section heading on the New York Times bestseller
list. The novel in verse is an emerging subgenre with roots in, as its name
suggests, poetry and fiction.
The modern-day novel in verse is similar to
the novel in that it contains some version or adaptation of the five pillars of
fiction (setting, character, plot, theme and style), which distinguishes it
from a long poem. The narrative arc is used to drive the story forward and
create conflict…The novel in verse must tell a story with a central unification,
complete with a beginning, middle and an end—like the novel. There must be a
climax and subsequent conflict resolution. The work must also be of
considerable length. There can be a single narrator or the story can be told
from multiple points of view. Colloquial language or slang is often used.
Dialogue is frequently included, although not to the extent it is used in the
novel. The poet, however, relies on imagery instead of exposition to drive the
story forward. The poems must function both individually and as part of the
whole. The work must also have a unifying theme.
To
put it quite simply, it’s a story told in poems.
Why write a
novel in verse?
All
poetry wants to be read. So it seems almost natural that poetic works began to
reflect features of the most popular literary form. The novel, while a
considerably younger genre than narrative poetry, is more accessible and more
widely read. It is a clever guise for poetry to take in an attempt to trigger resurgence
in popularity. Labeling a work a “novel in verse” gives the reader the notion
that the work follows a narrative arc and has the classic features and
functions of a novel, and thus also retains its fluidity. The novel is a genre
readers are comfortable with and enjoy.
I’m
often asked why I chose to write a novel in verse for my M.A. thesis. I’m still
not absolutely certain. I suppose, in a way, it chose me—kind of like the way the
music you love chooses you. The simple answer is it’s how my story wanted to be
written. Have you ever had that magical moment as a writer where the characters
and ideas that you dreamed up begin to move on their own and tell you where
they come from and what they want? It was kind of like that. The evolution of
my story is winding, and it still isn’t over.
I
am first and foremost a poet. When I enrolled in Wilkes University’s Low-Residency Creative Writing program
in the spring of 2009, there was no doubt in my mind I would pursue poetry.
Then, in the fall of that year, as I was packing my apartment to move from
North Carolina to New York, I rediscovered an old, unfinished fiction
manuscript (my first and only) that had been sitting at the bottom of a box for
nearly thirteen years. As I read it, the once-dormant tale immediately came
alive again and I was possessed to give it an ending. As I furiously typed the
eighty-eight-page conclusion, the story world and the characters began the metamorphosis into the story I have today—all by themselves. The characters
became real; they developed their own personalities—new ones, independent of
who they were in the unfinished manuscript. A more cohesive narrative began to
take shape. And I, the pen master, merely held the wand and pointed. It was one
of the most thrilling experiences I’ve ever had. I spent hours each day
dreaming this world into a fictional reality.
I
still had no intention of using this idea as the basis of my thesis; after all,
I was in no way a fiction writer. I knew my prose left much to be desired, but
when you’re writing with no intention of the manuscript ever seeing daylight,
your fingers seem to fly across the keyboard with reckless abandon and your
ideas are free to take shape without doubt or reluctance. The inner critic does
not have a voice. This is when we write our truest, and sometimes our best,
work. Our truest work forms a solid basis for revision, which has the potential
to become our best work.
It
was when I finished that draft and was on fire to write a sequel that I decided
it may be worthwhile to use the story in an academic setting. After all, I
practically lived in this story world—it consumed me, I breathed it—and figured
if a seasoned writer helped me hone my craft, I may just have a marketable
piece of writing! (Which was a foreign concept indeed—after all, I am a poet.)
For
whatever reason, the manuscript wasn’t working as fiction. The words that had
so easily inked themselves when no one was watching developed severe stage
fright when the spotlight was on.
It
wasn’t the story. No, the story was solid, and I knew that. What I learned is
that the story knows how it wants to be told, and the writer can’t force it.
After a brief hiatus, I decided to return to my roots. I’m not sure exactly
when I decided to write a novel in verse—I do know that, when I started, I had
no idea what a novel in verse was, or what other works existed that were
similar to mine. In fact, until about halfway through my first draft I thought
I could have very well been the pioneer of a brave new form! Everything I was
doing, everything I was writing was completely experimental. I wasn’t sure if
the story would even work as a series of poems. But it did.
What are some
examples of the novel in verse?
It
wasn’t until I started doing research for my Wilkes M.F.A. paper that I
discovered what a novel in verse is, who the real pioneers of the journey are
(sadly, it wasn’t me at all), and what its origins are. But that seems a little
too clear cut. The truth is there is nothing solid or decided about this subgenre,
at least not at present. The objective of my research was to read different
types of poems—everything from the Homeric epic to modern-day Young Adult verse
novels—and draw my own conclusions as to whether or not I would consider the
works novels in verse or just long poems. What were the similarities and
differences between the poems? What criteria does a work have to meet in order
to be considered a novel in verse?
I
pedaled through The Odyssey, slaved
over John Milton’s Paradise Lost, and
picked apart Modernist poems such as T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and Ezra Pound’ The
Cantos. I was introduced to some modern recreations of the epic, such as
Michael Lind’s self-proclaimed epic The Alamo and Derek Walcott’s structural masterpiece Omeros.
I
started to see what I would consider to be a novel in verse with Vikram Seth’s 1986
work The Golden Gate. This work
started to take on more of a conversational tone. Its structure was still
formal, but it told a cohesive story, complete with a beginning, a middle, and
an end. As I read more, I began to file other works in this category, including
Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red,
published in 1998. The subgenre really began to blossom, however, in the young
adult (YA) genre.
YA novels in
verse:
These
works are predominantly confessional, or diary-like, and can be told by alternating
voices or from multiple voices or points of view. Each poem in the verse novel
is usually brief, spanning no more than a page or two, and functions dually as
an individual poem and as a piece that contributes to and is an integral part
of the work as a whole. The titles of the poems play a key role in explaining or setting the scene; they give the reader a sense of the subject that, without
the title, may not otherwise make sense. The works tend to rely less on
dialogue than other long poems and the traditional novel; instead they rely on
imagery to evoke emotion from the reader. They commonly exhibit clever use of
line breaks, creative punctuation (or sometimes forsake punctuation entirely)
and employ a strong use of white space. Authors develop classic literary and
poetic techniques in their works, such as symbolism, allusion and metaphor.
In
1995, Karen Hesse wrote Out of the Dust,
a novel in verse from the point of view of a thirteen year-old girl living in
the Dust Bowl in the 1930s. Crank and
its numerous sequels, by Ellen Hopkins, followed a decade later and are
probably the most recognizable examples of the YA novel in verse. What stands
out about these works, as with most YA works, is the speaker is young, and
therefore many of these stories are coming-of-age narratives. These works use
simpler, more accessible language, which appeals to young readers and to a
wider audience in general. A possible drawback to this approach, it can be
argued, is that such simplicity of language strips the eloquence and beauty
classically regarded as an inherent quality of poetic form.
What are the
challenges of writing a novel in verse?
The
choice to write a novel in verse depends on both the author’s and the story’s
strengths. Some advantages to choosing this medium are that it provides freedom
from or easy manipulation of chronological time and makes it easier to include
multiple point-of-view characters or voices clearly. Some disadvantages include
the challenge of keeping the language edgy and sophisticated and finding
effective means to move the story forward, lacking the aid of prosaic
exposition. The use of multiple points of view, especially if the work is
non-linear, must be done with great caution to ensure clarity.
I
believe the majority of the difficulty lies in finding a market for the novel
in verse. There are a few small presses, such as Rose Metal Press, that
specialize in publishing these hybrid genres, but even if one is lucky enough
to win publication, the fact remains that poetry is still not as widely read as
the novel. As of present, the chances of the work finding a mainstream audience
remain small.
That’s
no reason to shy away from the novel in verse, though. It’s a promising,
blossoming form with much potential and can be an extremely rewarding process
for the writer who wants to experiment with a hybrid of poetry and fiction, or
to the writer like me who just can’t make up her mind. If the novel in verse
subgenre continues to draw in talented writers, I’m confident it will not only
be the next big literary trend but a great opportunity for young readers to
discover the magical world of poetry.
