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Fw: [NABOKV-L] [SIGHTING] The Guardian 2001 List of Fictional
Poets, a commentary, a satire.
Poets, a commentary, a satire.
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1. John Mullan's list of Ten of the best: fictional poets | Books | The Guardian
www.guardian.co.uk/.../ten-best-fictional-poets-li...
1..
Jeffrey Aspern
The poet in Henry James's short story "The Aspern Papers" is long dead, yet he dominates everything. James's narrator has come to Venice, lured by the rumour that Aspern's aged lover still possesses a cache of his papers. And so she does, but the price he must pay for them, though not monetary, is too high.
Francis Croft
In Susan Hill's The Bird of Night, academic Harvey Lawson befriends a mysterious poet called Francis Croft and becomes convinced of his genius. As Croft descends into madness, Harvey dedicates himself to caring for him. As an old man, Harvey is doomed to be pursued by Croft's admirers.
Randolph Henry Ash
AS Byatt's Possession tells the story of two 19th-century poets: the imperious Ash and the elusively sexy Christabel LaMotte. Byatt also provides the poetry written by her two poet lovers. To Ash she gives imitations of Browning (with a stir of William Morris); to LaMotte she lends the cadences of Emily Dickinson with the imagery of Christina Rossetti.
Yuri Zhivago
This is how poets like to be seen. The hero of Boris Paternak's Dr Zhivago is a doctor as well as a poet. He suffers the tumults of 20th-century Russian history, but his poetry survives Stalinism and the death of their author.
John Grammaticus
In Ian McEwan's Saturday, Henry Perowne's daughter is about to have her first, evidently sexy, collection of poems published. She aspires to impress Grammaticus, her grandfather, who has retreated to the south of France to glower with envy at the recognition accorded to Seamus Heaney, Andrew Motion and Craig Raine (all namechecked).
Strugnell
The invention of Wendy Cope, Strugnell is a rather too impressionable south London poet who always adopts another's style. "The incandescent football in the East / Has brought the splendour of Tulse Hill to Light". From Cope's parody of Larkin's "Mr Bleaney" we find out that he used to work at Norwood library and is fond of Dick Francis novels.
Paul Chowder
The narrator of Nicholson Baker's The Anthologist is a renowned but second-rate poet who is writing the introduction to an anthology. Though he has been dumped by his lover, he still has the works of poets greater than himself to relish. Much of his narrative is given over to his own theories of scansion, tested out on these works.
Francis Xavier Enderby
The grumpy, bumbling, erudite Enderby first makes his appearance in Anthony Burgess's Inside Mr Enderby. He likes to compose his poems on the lavatory and has his creator's lexical relish. He is inspired by the hot breath of a white goddess, his poetic muse, but loses touch with her when he marries the editor of a woman's magazine.
Bob McCorkle
This Aussie bard is doubly fictional, being the invention of Christopher Chubb, a character in Peter Carey's novel My Life as a Fake. The novel draws on the true story of "Ern Malley", the supposed author of a hoax collection of modernist poems. Chubb is himself a mediocre poet, who manages to create a poet better than himself. The creation turns nasty when someone calling himself Bob McCorkle actually turns up to take the credit for it.
John Shade
Shade is the author of a partly autobiographical 999-line poem called "Pale Fire", which features in the novel of the same name by Vladimir Nabokov. Missing its final thousanth line, it is copiously annotated by Charles Kinbote, a former neighbour of the poet. It becomes evident from these notes that Shade has been murdered in a plot involving a foreign assassin.
Cf. Ten of the best: fictional poets by John Mullan, The Guardian, Saturday 19 February
...................................................................................
2. Fictional poets write fictional poetry, hold fictional grudges : Poetry ...
www.poetryfoundation.org/.../fictional-poets-wri...
While Dean Rader has called for a search for the ten greatest poets of all time, The Guardian's John Mullan has set himself up with a more constrained task: the ten best poets who themselves are the figments of other authors' imaginations. These fictional poets run the gamut from the title character in Dr. Zhivago whose poetry "survives Stalinism and the death of their author" to the fiction-within-a-fiction of the poet Bob McCorkle created by Christopher Chubb, a character in Peter Carey'sMy Life as a Fake: "Chubb is himself a mediocre poet, who manages to create a poet better than himself."
Just because these poets are fictional, however, doesn't mean that they're immune from feeling spite and jealously for those real poets who might very well find themselves on an actual list of the greatest... Fictional poets. They're just like us.
Posted in Poetry News on Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011 by Poetry News.
............................................................................................
3. Wikepedia: William Ashbless is a fictional poet, invented by fantasy writers James Blaylock and Tim Powers.
Ashbless was invented by Powers and Blaylock when they were students at Cal State Fullerton in the early 1970s, originally as a reaction to the low quality of the poetry being published in the school magazine. They invented nonsensical free verse poetry and submitted it to the paper in Ashbless's name, where it was reportedly enthusiastically accepted.Ashbless is, however, best known in his incarnation as a 19th century poet, in which guise he appears in Powers' The Anubis Gates (1983) and as a lesser character in Blaylock's The Digging Leviathan (1984). Neither author was aware that the other's novel contained a William Ashbless until the coincidence was noticed by the editor responsible for both books, who suggested that the two consult one another so that their references would be consistent.
In 1985, Powers and Blaylock produced Offering the Bicentennial Edition of the Complete Twelve Hours of the Night: 1785-1985, a prospectus for a non-existent collection of Ashbless poetry, published by Cheap Street Press. ("The Twelve Hours of the Night" had been mentioned in The Anubis Gates as Ashbless's most famous work.) The prospectus included a sample poem and a replica of Ashbless's signature (the "William" was signed by one, and the "Ashbless" by the other, of the authors). This was followed in 2001 by On Pirates (ISBN 1-931081-22-0) - supposedly written by Ashbless, with an introduction by Powers, an afterword by Blaylock, and illustrations by Gahan Wilson - and in 2002 by The William Ashbless Memorial Cookbook.
In his 1992 novel Last Call (ISBN 0-688-10732-X), Tim Powers includes a poem attributed to William Ashbless in the introduction to Book One. The poem is from a later time period: it mentions airplanes, cars and blue jeans.
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/
www.guardian.co.uk/.../ten-best-fictional-poets-li...
1..
Jeffrey Aspern
The poet in Henry James's short story "The Aspern Papers" is long dead, yet he dominates everything. James's narrator has come to Venice, lured by the rumour that Aspern's aged lover still possesses a cache of his papers. And so she does, but the price he must pay for them, though not monetary, is too high.
Francis Croft
In Susan Hill's The Bird of Night, academic Harvey Lawson befriends a mysterious poet called Francis Croft and becomes convinced of his genius. As Croft descends into madness, Harvey dedicates himself to caring for him. As an old man, Harvey is doomed to be pursued by Croft's admirers.
Randolph Henry Ash
AS Byatt's Possession tells the story of two 19th-century poets: the imperious Ash and the elusively sexy Christabel LaMotte. Byatt also provides the poetry written by her two poet lovers. To Ash she gives imitations of Browning (with a stir of William Morris); to LaMotte she lends the cadences of Emily Dickinson with the imagery of Christina Rossetti.
Yuri Zhivago
This is how poets like to be seen. The hero of Boris Paternak's Dr Zhivago is a doctor as well as a poet. He suffers the tumults of 20th-century Russian history, but his poetry survives Stalinism and the death of their author.
John Grammaticus
In Ian McEwan's Saturday, Henry Perowne's daughter is about to have her first, evidently sexy, collection of poems published. She aspires to impress Grammaticus, her grandfather, who has retreated to the south of France to glower with envy at the recognition accorded to Seamus Heaney, Andrew Motion and Craig Raine (all namechecked).
Strugnell
The invention of Wendy Cope, Strugnell is a rather too impressionable south London poet who always adopts another's style. "The incandescent football in the East / Has brought the splendour of Tulse Hill to Light". From Cope's parody of Larkin's "Mr Bleaney" we find out that he used to work at Norwood library and is fond of Dick Francis novels.
Paul Chowder
The narrator of Nicholson Baker's The Anthologist is a renowned but second-rate poet who is writing the introduction to an anthology. Though he has been dumped by his lover, he still has the works of poets greater than himself to relish. Much of his narrative is given over to his own theories of scansion, tested out on these works.
Francis Xavier Enderby
The grumpy, bumbling, erudite Enderby first makes his appearance in Anthony Burgess's Inside Mr Enderby. He likes to compose his poems on the lavatory and has his creator's lexical relish. He is inspired by the hot breath of a white goddess, his poetic muse, but loses touch with her when he marries the editor of a woman's magazine.
Bob McCorkle
This Aussie bard is doubly fictional, being the invention of Christopher Chubb, a character in Peter Carey's novel My Life as a Fake. The novel draws on the true story of "Ern Malley", the supposed author of a hoax collection of modernist poems. Chubb is himself a mediocre poet, who manages to create a poet better than himself. The creation turns nasty when someone calling himself Bob McCorkle actually turns up to take the credit for it.
John Shade
Shade is the author of a partly autobiographical 999-line poem called "Pale Fire", which features in the novel of the same name by Vladimir Nabokov. Missing its final thousanth line, it is copiously annotated by Charles Kinbote, a former neighbour of the poet. It becomes evident from these notes that Shade has been murdered in a plot involving a foreign assassin.
Cf. Ten of the best: fictional poets by John Mullan, The Guardian, Saturday 19 February
...................................................................................
2. Fictional poets write fictional poetry, hold fictional grudges : Poetry ...
www.poetryfoundation.org/.../fictional-poets-wri...
While Dean Rader has called for a search for the ten greatest poets of all time, The Guardian's John Mullan has set himself up with a more constrained task: the ten best poets who themselves are the figments of other authors' imaginations. These fictional poets run the gamut from the title character in Dr. Zhivago whose poetry "survives Stalinism and the death of their author" to the fiction-within-a-fiction of the poet Bob McCorkle created by Christopher Chubb, a character in Peter Carey'sMy Life as a Fake: "Chubb is himself a mediocre poet, who manages to create a poet better than himself."
Just because these poets are fictional, however, doesn't mean that they're immune from feeling spite and jealously for those real poets who might very well find themselves on an actual list of the greatest... Fictional poets. They're just like us.
Posted in Poetry News on Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011 by Poetry News.
............................................................................................
3. Wikepedia: William Ashbless is a fictional poet, invented by fantasy writers James Blaylock and Tim Powers.
Ashbless was invented by Powers and Blaylock when they were students at Cal State Fullerton in the early 1970s, originally as a reaction to the low quality of the poetry being published in the school magazine. They invented nonsensical free verse poetry and submitted it to the paper in Ashbless's name, where it was reportedly enthusiastically accepted.Ashbless is, however, best known in his incarnation as a 19th century poet, in which guise he appears in Powers' The Anubis Gates (1983) and as a lesser character in Blaylock's The Digging Leviathan (1984). Neither author was aware that the other's novel contained a William Ashbless until the coincidence was noticed by the editor responsible for both books, who suggested that the two consult one another so that their references would be consistent.
In 1985, Powers and Blaylock produced Offering the Bicentennial Edition of the Complete Twelve Hours of the Night: 1785-1985, a prospectus for a non-existent collection of Ashbless poetry, published by Cheap Street Press. ("The Twelve Hours of the Night" had been mentioned in The Anubis Gates as Ashbless's most famous work.) The prospectus included a sample poem and a replica of Ashbless's signature (the "William" was signed by one, and the "Ashbless" by the other, of the authors). This was followed in 2001 by On Pirates (ISBN 1-931081-22-0) - supposedly written by Ashbless, with an introduction by Powers, an afterword by Blaylock, and illustrations by Gahan Wilson - and in 2002 by The William Ashbless Memorial Cookbook.
In his 1992 novel Last Call (ISBN 0-688-10732-X), Tim Powers includes a poem attributed to William Ashbless in the introduction to Book One. The poem is from a later time period: it mentions airplanes, cars and blue jeans.
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/