On Poets Writing Novels

The primacy of the novel in the literary imagination is seldom disputed—not even among poets, who seem lately to be trading up in confirmation. A short list of crossovers includes Kaveh Akbar, Aria Aber, Ben Purkert, Ruth Madvesky, and Will Brewer, among others—all celebrated millennial poets, with one or several collections each. The young poet writing a novel today owes a debt to Ben Lerner, who practically set the whole field in motion—providing a model for crossing over that doesn’t wholly sacrifice the poet’s lyric investment in the self. Of course, I am talking about what critics call autofiction—specifically the “auto” part—which extends an invitation to blur lines and muddy reality in ways no doubt familiar to poets.