* * *
And speaking of Criminal Brief, Steven Steinbock has posted there the second part of his annotated list of favorite crime-story anthologies. This time out, Anthony Boucher, Robert Arthur, and Frederic Dannay all win kudos for assembling and editing memorable collections. The full item is available here.Saturday, June 09, 2007
Mayhem By Meter
Our friend Anthony Rainone has remarked before on poetry’s place in the crime-fiction genre. Now comes Hard Case Crime honcho Charles Ardai, recalling in the blog Criminal Brief how versifiers as varied as Robert Browning, Edgar Allan Poe, and Tom Lehrer have executed thrilling crime stories in poetry. Ardai, it seems, is following in their big footsteps, as a 21-page, “honest-to-god crime story” told in double dactyls, which he had set aside many years ago as “unpublishable,” is soon to be issued as a chapbook by A Midsummer Night’s Press. Read more of Ardai’s remarks here.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
It might be worth mentioning here that the last book but one by my man Bill James, The Sixth Man and Other Stories, begins with a poem. I'm not sure what aesthetic criteria to use in judging it, but as crime writing, it's pretty good.
===================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Here's where I put my patriotic hat on and direct your attention to the recently released (in Australia) verse novel by Dorothy Porter titled El Dorado. This takes the "poetry in a crime novel" to a whole new level by making it a "poetry is a crime novel".
I haven't read it but by all accounts it is a powerful psychological thriller of around 370 pages. It contains all of the things crime readers love, but constructed in the thing that poetry readers love.
Worth a look.
A crime story in double dactyls does sound unpublishable. Ardai's gut feeling may have been right on that one.
Post a Comment