Reddit mentions of Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons

This is longer than I thought it would be. Sorry for that. Turns out I have a lot of feelings about novels in verse form.

I took a poetry class a few semesters ago and we read some contemporary long narratives in verse form (Omeros by Derek Walcott, a post-colonial epic; The Golden Gate by Vikram Seth, a novel in verse form; and Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons by Marilyn Hacker, a modern sonnet sequence with an overlaying narrative). Although I personally enjoyed all of these works for the technical skill they each show, I think the class came to the consensus that Seth's use of verse in the novel at times feels trite, and, because of the specific verse form he's using (iambic tetrameter with an Onegin rhyme scheme), it at times feels a little nursery rhymey, which takes away from the seriousness of the novel.

Despite the possibility of triteness, though, the writing teacher in me wants you to do it. It might end up terrible, but I think it would make for a REALLY good exercise in writing a coherent narrative through some fairly serious constraints. You probably won't be Marilyn Hacker (who I think is brilliant) right away, but writing a narrative in verse will give you a greater appreciation for the way words sound in combination and the way lines and the spaces between them can contribute to the development of a narrative. Really, any experimentation in your writing, whether it produces a "good" or "bad" result, I think is ultimately to your benefit as a writer because it allows you to develop your own personal sense of what works.

The student studying for the GRE literature subject test in me also wants you to try to write your fantasy novel in verse form because of the genre's frequent nod to/setting in Medievalism or the Renaissance. Writing at these times was in verse form, and those narratives aren't at all disturbed by it. Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is beautiful in part because of the verse form (it and the Middle English in which it was written produce a really melodious, sing songy quality), and Shakespeare's sonnet sequence is beautiful because of how individual sonnets interact with each other to develop the speaker's character and the love object after which he pines. George Herbert's The Church, and Philip Sidney's Astrophil and Stella are also good examples of longer narratives told through sequencing.

As for concerns about whether or not anyone will actually read it, even if it is really good, I think Smith4844 is right: "...most people don't read poetry (sad fact actually since poetry is great) and when they encounter something that is essentially one giant poem they wont read it." Most people don't read poetry. But academics do, and academics are who make you famous because, if it's good, they talk about your work, publish articles on your work, and make their students read your work. But, then again, I also think there's a ton of value to just writing whatever you want regardless of publication prospects (or at least trying to), and I think if your work is REALLY good, you can get it published somewhere (or at least a portion of it).

TL;DR: Do it.

The two classics of the lesbian bildungsroman, IMO, are Oranges are Not the Only Fruit and The Color Purple. Both have TV/film adaptations.


The Well of Loneliness is kinda depressing I think (also suffers from the period confusion between gender identity and sexual orientation).


I have more that I will think about, but if you want physical journeys Oranges is a very good bet, while Color Purple is more internal. There's also Woolf's Orlando which is less explicitly 'lesbian' but has become a queer classic and involves a badass immortal genderbending protagonist.


If these walls could talk discusses lesbian experience over time, as does The Hours (but god that's a long movie!).


Marilyn Hacker wrote a beautiful sonnet series about the progress of a lesbian affair over time (including international travel) called Love, Death and the Changing of Seasons.


I'm going to go downstairs and check my bookshelves for any more that pop to mind. Let me know where you are struggling and I will specify the search. Jeanette Winterson (of Oranges) also has a ton of other novels/short stories that discuss lesbian experience and journeys.