The Poetry of Mystery

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: This is so gorgeously thought-provoking! And I adore when we have a topic we have never discussed before.

I met Kate Michaelson at Thrillerfest–and she is completely lovely. She’s a member of SINC, and ITW, and is a debut author, hurray! Her brand new book is HIDDEN ROOMS, and more about that below.

She also has an MFA in poetry. Is that valuable to a mystery author? Oh, yes, yes indeed.

The Poetry of Mystery

   By Kate Michaelson

 

What do Edgar Allen Poe, Agatha Christie, and Dorothy Sayers have in common? If you said they’re legendary crime writers, yes. But did you know they all wrote poetry as well? Others, like P.D. James and Louise Penny, infuse poetry into their mysteries with characters like poet-detective Adam Dalgliesh and Three Pines bard Ruth Zardo. 

 

At first glance, poetry and mystery couldn’t differ more. After all, poems make us slow down and reread a page. Mysteries, on the other hand, keep us turning the pages, propelling us forward to find out what happens next. So why does poetry appeal to so many mystery writers?

 

Having completed an MFA in poetry before writing my first mystery, I know a bit about this connection. In switching genres, I realized both types of writing actually have a lot in common.

 

For one thing, poets and mystery writers are both masters of microtension—those moments that may not address plot-level conflict, but still capture emotional clashes or uneasy juxtapositions. Like fiction writers, poets use small doses of conflict to drive poems forward.

One of my favorite poems, “How to Like It” by Stephen Dobyns, uses this technique to perfection as a man walks his dog on an unsettled autumn night. The poem opens by describing “the first days of fall” and a wind that “smells of roads still to be traveled.”

 

As the poem progresses, we see how the man’s settled life is at odds with the blustery night.

But in his sense of the season, the man is struck

by the oppressiveness of his past, how his memories

which were shifting and fluid have grown more solid…

 

Dobyns vacillates between stillness versus a desire to explore, until the poem culminates by asking, “How is it possible to want so many things / and still want nothing?” 

Part of what makes poetry so potent are these compressed doses of tension, everyday moments we often grasp with more immediacy than larger, more abstract plot points.

 

Likewise, mysteries use microtension to keep readers engaged in scenes where the central conflict fades into the background. Whether we’re developing characters or sneaking in backstory, small frictions keep readers going. These moments don’t necessarily address “whodunnit.” Rather, they make us worry whether the protagonist will have one-too-many drinks with her new colleagues, even as her spouse waits at home on their anniversary.

Or—to take a lesson from Dobyns—microtensions remind us that every human knows what it’s like to want two very different things at the same moment. 

 

Along with having an eye for microtension, poets and crime writers share keen instincts for what details to hold back, keeping their readers invested from moment to moment. Poets distill universal truths into a series of spare, broken lines—often on a single page—by winnowing away extraneous information to lay bare the essence of an emotion or moment. 

 

Crime writers, similarly, lay trails of intriguing breadcrumbs while concealing the explanations that tie them together. These omissions leave room for readers to summon their own emotional responses. Faced with only the most essential information, readers must fill in the gaps and enter the story as active participants.

 

Even though poems invite us to pause and mysteries forge ahead headlong, that doesn’t mean crime writing can’t boast poetic language. In my favorite mysteries, the words themselves are a joy to read. These books give me the best of both worlds: beautiful language to drink up and a riveting plot that won’t let me go. 

 

I have my favorites, but who are some crime writers whose work you’d describe as poetic?

HANK: Oh, I'm not sure I've ever thought of it that way, but I just finished--and beyond adored--Chris Whitaker's ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK which is as gorgeously and seamlessly poetic as any book I have ever read. (And one of my favorites ever. Truly, do not miss it.)

What about you, Reds and Readers?

 

 

***

 

Kate Michaelson 

Kate Michaelson’s debut novel, Hidden Rooms, won the 2022 Hugh Holton Award for best unpublished mystery by a Midwest writer and was released in April of 2024. As a curriculum developer and technical writer, she has created educational content on everything from media literacy to cybersecurity awareness. She is active in Sisters in Crime and participates in causes that support those with disabilities and chronic illness. In her free time, she loves hiking, traveling, napping and anything else that takes her away from her laptop. She grew up in Greenwich, Ohio and now lives in Toledo, Ohio with her husband and pets.

 

 

Hidden Rooms

Long-distance runner Riley Svenson  has been fighting various bewildering symptoms for months, from vertigo to fainting spells. Worse, her doctors can’t tell her what’s wrong, leaving her to wonder if it’s stress or something more threatening. But when her brother’s fiancée is killed—and he becomes the prime suspect—Riley must prove his innocence, despite the toll on her health.

 

As she reacquaints herself with the familiar houses and wild woods of her childhood, the secrets she uncovers take her on a trail to the real killer that leads right back to the very people she knows best and loves most.

Thoughts on Poetry

RHYS BOWEN : I love the book Possession by Byatt, don’t you? It’s an absolute tour de force, especially the way she has created a whole body of poetry for two fictitious poets in the style of Tennyson and Christina Rosetti.

 Back in the day poetry was a big thing. There were court poets in the Middle Ages who lived well thanks to rich patrons. Homer was a celebrity. Everyone knew Keats and Shelley and Lord Byron. And Tennyson –he was even made a lord for his poetry. And Longfellow. So what has happened to us today? Why have we lost our love of poetry? The closest we have to poet celebrities is Leonard Cohen, who set his poems to music, perhaps Mary Oliver, although I doubt the average person has heard of her.

 We no longer value poetry, do we?. A poet can certainly not make a good living. Nobody goes to college and says “I’m going to be a poet,” without their parents tearing their hair out.

Why is this, I wonder.

 Maybe it’s because poetry was designed to be spoken aloud, and modern poets try to be too clever and esoteric:

 Stars at night

Falling. Boom. Crash. Thud.

Like stricken bodies

Into my tea cup

Why?

 (that’s not a real poem. I just made it up, but you get the gist) It creates an idea, a picture, a fleeting thought, but then it’s gone.

How many of us had to learn poems by heart in school?

 On either side the rive lie

Fields of barley and of rye

That clothe the world and meet the sky

And all the day the folk go by

To many towered Camelot…. 

 I can still recite so many of them: The Ancient Mariner, Hiawatha, The Forsaken Merman, lots of Robert Louis Stevenson and of course Shakespeare.

And do you know what? They all rhymed. They were all easy and fun to speak out loud.

 That is what we’ve lost. My great aunts used to recite poetry during evening soirees. So we’ve lost the occasions to do this. And perhaps the poets are still here, but they’ve put their poetry to music: Bob Dylan, Lennon and McCartney, Steven Sondheim…

 I don't think children learn poetry in school and longer. Only English majors will ever discover Keats, or Longfellow. Children will never sit in the back of cars chanting:

 Faster than fairies faster than witches,

Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches,

Riding along like troops in a battle

All through the meadows, the horses and cattle…

 I loved it. I miss it.  I’d be a poet if I could make a living at it. My mother tells me that I wrote my first poem at 4.

I used to write lots of poetry in my teens. I'd sit in a darkened room, put a Tchaikovsky record on the radiogram and let my heart outpour. Come to think of it, many of them didn't rhyme either: But some did:

Sit, a stone, and survey

Until love and life pass away

Rest, a rock on the shore,

Until faith and death 

are no more.

Then, as a new moon, alone

Arise and face the unknown.

They were all pretty bleak and sad at that time, I think. i was a huge fan of Gerard Manley Hopkins.

So share your thoughts, dear Reds

Do you miss poetry? Did you have to learn it? Did you ever write any. What can we do to bring it back

HALLIE EPHRON: Goodness yes, I had to memorize poems in elementary school. Remember “Barare Frietchie?” (“Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,/

But spare your country’s flag,” she said.) “Evangeline.” (“This the forest primeval…)

And then the ones I memorized just because I read them so many times and liked the way they sounded. (e. e. Cummings -anyone lived in a pretty how town. / (with up so floating many bells down)...

That’s the thing about poetry - so much of it is meant to be spoken and listened to. Though I confess a lot of poetry leaves me scratching my head and wondering what I’m missing. Is it ok to say that?  

JENN McKINLAY: I love poetry! WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS was published when I was a kid and I memorized so many Shel Silverstein poems. They were charming and clever and just delightful. Also, I grew up in New England so memorizing Emily Dickinson felt like a requirement.

I do believe poetry is alive and well in the younger generations. My nephew is a poet and writes and performs in poetry slams in local Boston coffee shops. When I was a teen librarian we hosted slams for teens by an outfit called Phonetic Spit. Some of the poems were angry, others broke your heart, and a few really made you think but the best part was that it was all written and performed by teens who’d discovered the use of poetry to deal with life’s joys and sorrows and it was wonderful. Also, we have Amanda Gorman’s The Hill We Climb bringing poetry to a new generation, which is terrific. I think poetry, like music, has changed in tone and style over time but it’s still there and it’s still relevant and I don’t believe it will ever disappear completely. 

LUCY BURDETTE: I’m always envious of fiction writers that began as poets because I feel they have a better grasp of how to use language beautifully. My prose is more workmanlike than poetic. However, I will share something that makes me laugh when I think about it. I set my second book, DEATH IN FOUR COURSES, at a conference for food writers and one of the characters was a “culinary poet.” After the victim is found, they have a small wake-ish event and the poet is called upon to read. I had such fun writing this:

Fritz pushed his glasses to his forehead, unfolded a half sheet of lined paper, and smoothed it on the podium. He studied his audience with pale blue eyes, then turned his attention to the paper.

“The Butcher,” he said. “A poem to honor Jonah Barrows.”

 “Morning comes, the butcher’s wife hands him an apron, starched white.

Keep it clean, she says.

At night, he brings it home, layered with the detritus of his day.

A splash of blood from the rib eye steaks carved for the rich man on the hill.

A touch of green from lobsters cracked and cleaned for the fussy housewife,

Who will eat pink flesh but not green, no matter how good it tastes.

Marrow from hacked bones,

Distributed to fancy restaurants and slathering dogs alike.

And as the day goes by, the hues of the apron morph from red to gray.

I tried, he says, handing it to the missus come evening. I had to do my work.”

RHYS: I love this, Lucy!

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Rhys, I adored Possession. I read it in one sitting–literally, on a ten-hour London to Dallas flight–and was just blown away. It definitely influenced me to write Dreaming of the Bones (in which I, like Lucy above, included poetry.) It was poetry that started me writing as a teen, in fact, and I read a lot. e.e. cummings, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, TS Eliot, Ezra Pound (why, I ask now!), Auden, Plath, Stevie Smith, Anne Sexton, Larkin, Wallace Stevens. And of course my beloved Dylan Thomas. I was never as good at memorizing, however, except for William Blake, who is forever engraved in my brain!

I hope poetry isn't lost! I think that exposure to language opens pathways in the brain that otherwise don't develop, and that makes our lives and our thinking so much richer and more nuanced. 

You've encouraged me to get back to my "poem a day" practice!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Yes, I have a poem a day, too! I’m Yeats, Auden, Wallace Stevens. I had the honor of reading Czieslaw Milosz’s “On Angels” at my father's funeral, and highly recommend it as a source of peace and inspiration and wonder.  And, with a name like mine, I constantly think of Robert Frost's “Maple,” which begins sweetly, about a girl named Maple who everyone thinks is “Mabel,” and her search for her mother’s meaning in naming her before she died in childbirth,  and ends with a bitter twist.  

Thus had a name with meaning, given in death,

Made a girl's marriage, and ruled in her life.

No matter that the meaning was not clear.

A name with meaning could bring up a child,

Taking the child out of the parents' hands.

Better a meaningless name, I should say,

As leaving more to nature and happy chance.

Name children some names and see what you do.

(Maybe we should all remember this when we name our characters…)

RHYS: So who are your favorite poets?  I still adore Robert Frost, Auden, Walt Whitman, Mary Oliver, Keats... 

Happy Thanksgiving!

 Whether you are one or two at a table, or crowded in with friends and family, the Jungle Reds wish you a day of connection, reflection, and gratitude. Muskogee writer Joy Harjo, the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States, shares her poem about the worlds and lives we make around those tables. We hope you enjoy it.

New Year's Eve in Four Poems

 JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: What can be said about this New Year's Eve without a small sting? Little champagne, still less parties, and Times Square roomy with one fourth of the usual revelers. Many of us see the year pass with a weary sigh, wondering worriedly about the next. 

This is a good time for the reflection and consolation of poetry. I thought I'd share four poems written for this night - do they speak to you? What poems or readings would you include for a New Year's Eve?

 

Pavane for the New Year by Elder James Olson

 

Soul, plucking the many strings

Of my limbs like puppet’s, make them dance,

Dance, dance, in somber joy,

That after all the sullen play

The old world falls, the new world forms.

 

A thought like music takes us now,

So like, that every soul must move,

Move in a most stately measure,

And souls and bodies tread in time

Till all the trembling towers fall down.

 

And now the stones arise again

Till all the world is built anew

And now in one accord like rhyme,

And we who wound the midnight clock

Hear the clock of morning chime.

    from Poetry Magazine, December 1948 

 The Year by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

What can be said in New Year rhymes, 

That’s not been said a thousand times? 

The new years come, the old years go, 

We know we dream, we dream we know. 

We rise up laughing with the light, 

We lie down weeping with the night. 

We hug the world until it stings, 

We curse it then and sigh for wings. 

We live, we love, we woo, we wed, 

We wreathe our prides, we sheet our dead. 

We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear, 

And that’s the burden of a year.

 

Promises by Jackie Kay

Remember, the time of year
when the future appears
like a blank sheet of paper
a clean calendar, a new chance.
On thick white snow
You vow fresh footprints
then watch them go
with the wind’s hearty gust.
Fill your glass. Here’s tae us. Promises
made to be broken, made to last.

    from A Poem for Every Day of the Year, Aillie Asiri, editor

 

Good Riddance, But Now What? by Ogden Nash

Come, children, gather round my knee;
Something is about to be.
Tonight’s December thirty-first,
Something is about to burst.
The clock is crouching, dark and small,
Like a time bomb in the hall.
Hark! It’s midnight, children dear.
Duck! Here comes another year.

What We're Writing Week - a poem by the very late Julia Spencer-Fleming

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: My apologies to everyone and my profound thanks to Hank, who put up a post this morning because I had completely forgotten it was my day. I had a perfect storm of what we might call Quarantine symptoms - I had a hard time keeping track of what day it was all this past week, I escaped from reality last night with a movie binge with my family, and then had a lengthy bout of insomnia in the middle of the night and didn't wake up until almost noon!

Which I will awkwardly attempt to segue into what I intended to post today -  the Reds were having a discussion about our various hair woes due to the shut down, and also the frustration we were all feeling about everything being the same, day in and day out, forever and ever, amen.

To which Lucy said, "Maybe I'll just dye my hair pink." It reminded me of that (somewhat overused) poem that beings "When I am old, I will wear a red hat," and inspired me to write this. 

When I am old, I will dye my hair pink

And wear inappropriately tight jeans

With orthopedically correct shoes.

I will tell boys they're sweet and kind

And girls they're strong and smart

I will call the surgeon by his first name

But the plumber will always be Mr.

I will tell my girlfriends everything

I will tell my husband what he needs to hear

("I don't care what you read, the doctor says to take it")

When I travel, I will go to Venice and Paris,

London, India, Indiana,

Buy the grandkids indulgent toys

Fill my cart with just organic foods

But watch TV on a twenty-year-old set

(the cat loves to sleep on top.)

When I am old, I will work, and work, and work

And if I stop, it will be for wine or tea and books

I will watch the sunset from beyond the edge of a novel

And at the end read everything I wanted.

Thanks for your patience, dear readers!

Covid-19: Turning into my Dog by Marty Krasney

LUCY BURDETTE: I belong to an alumni writers email list, and last week one of our members posted a poem about how his dog is handling the Covid 19 crisis. I loved it so much that I asked him if I could share it with you. And he agreed...

Dexter (with Marty) ready for a walk in the rain

"Covid 19 - Turning Into My Dog" by Marty Krasney


Dexter's doing what Dexter always does.
That mostly means napping at one of ten
of his favorite places around the house,
or, if not quite napping, seeking comfort.
Top of the list, the bed in the guest room,
usually the bolster near the headboard,
unless there's a sunlit patch further down.
He likes to lie on his back on the couch
in the booklined den with the Tibetan
rug. Dexter's a Tibetan Terrier;
does he remember from prior lifetimes?
There's a narrow place next to the toilet
which he leaves quickly if I come to pee.
Surprising he likes it on the cold tiles;
that too might be linked to his heritage.
They were temple dogs when not herding yaks.
The old green leather chairs in the kitchen,
especially when someone's visiting,

(though that's now just a memory for us both)
or I'm reading, and there's something to eat.

All night, the chair near the TV upstairs
except when he hears animals outside
and runs back downstairs to investigate.
That's when he barks to say this is my house.
then stops off in the kitchen for a drink.


Moving from place to place, from there to here.
Kind of settled but not really settled.
Paying attention though not clear to what.
Maybe aware that death comes for everyone;

meanwhile, making a life, around and through.
Warmth and connection, blessed solitude.

Today pretty much the same as yesterday.

With luck tomorrow will be like today.
That's been Dexter's response to the virus.
And starting this past week, it's mine now too.



Lucy again: I hope you love that poem as much as I do. Now I'm desperate for a Tibetan terrier. Do you have an animal in your life who's offering survival lessons for these times? Or a poem or book that's helping you through?

Here's another lovely poem John and I saw posted on the lawn of the courthouse in Key West on Sunday:

If you think you could use more poetry in your life, here are a couple of resources. Pome sends you a poem every day--some days they speak to me and I save them to read again, and others wash by.


https://tinyletter.com/pome

Also the poetry Foundation publishes a poem a day: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/poem-of-the-day

As does Poets.org https://poets.org/poem-a-day#


About Marty: Marty Krasney served as an executive, adviser and board member for NGOs In education, social justice, civic engagement and leadership development, starting in 1969 at the Woodrow Wilson foundation in Princeton and mostly ending in 2018 with the transfer to a permanent home at the University of Virginia of Dalai Lama Fellows. He helped found that program and lead it for a decade, identifying and developing young contemplative social justice activist from all over the world and engaging them in a lifelong secular community addressing major global challenges. 

He has had stories published in half a dozen journals, most prominently five in Arete, published at Oxford University. He has devoted significant energy to poetry only in the last five years. He’s had pieces published in Innisfree, and is at work now on two book-length narrative pieces.