You and me both, Kathy-- I respect poetry and there's some of it that really speaks to me, like Auden, for example, but for the most part, not my preferred reading. And I cannot in any way, get into novels written in verse. They make me twitch.

I do like Homer and Beowulf, as well as Chaucer, but those are more prose-poems than poetry, IMO.

ETA: Would you consider those as novels written in verse, Barb? I don't think I've ever seen a modern novel written in verse form--I shudder to think how that would read.

I remember how I suffered through my Renaissance lit class in college. Since we had to take Shakespeare as a separate class, we dealt with the other authors of the time, mostly Spenser's The Faerie Queen. Ugh, what a slog to get through that!

I love poetry. I think many people hate it because of how it's taught.

Lots of contemporary poetry is fantastic because you don't have to do the big giant lit crit on it.

In terms of novels written in verse, there are plenty for young adults, including Make Lemonade. Even my kids who hate poetry like the books because you forget that they are verse (most are free verse). They're great for reluctant readers because there is so much more white space!

Paging Steph! Have you read the second Skulduggery Pleasant book? I just ordered it and wanted to know what you thought.

LOVE!!!! More Tanith, which made me happy. Skulduggery is still SMOOV. My namesake kicks some ass. It's really good.

OOOH! Now I can't wait for the book to arrive. Tanith rocks. Does Ghastly become destatue-ified ?

Poets I consider influential: James Wright, Theodore Roethke, Richard Hugo, John Berryman, A.R. Ammons, Marvin Bell, James Dickey, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, maybe Charles Simic.

Corwood? you are in my house, looking at my bookshelf?

I was trying to stick mostly with 20thc. writers. I could go on for days, and didn't want to bore everyone. (Yeats, Auden, Hughes, Whitman, Wordsworth, Shelley, Basho, Shakespeare, Rilke, Milton (yes, don't hurt me.).

Kat, you're right - it is how poetry is taught that is a big turnoff for a lot of people. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for fighting the good fight.

Corwood? you are in my house, looking at my bookshelf?

Heh. I have a movie review going up later today in which I prove my ultimate pansy-hood by ending a discussion about a football movie with James Wright's "Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio." I almost gave myself a swirlie for that one.

I was trying to stick mostly with 20thc. writers

Yeah, those are the ones with the greatest influence on the way I write, mainly because of the proximity of their syntax to my own. I based a lot of my little 33 1/3 book on Dante's Inferno, but I went with the John Ciardi translation (instead of, say, the Longfellow translation) because his ear is musical enough to incorporate prior translations into language more seamless with English as it is spoken now.

Does Ghastly become

I am SO not spoiling you! Nice try....