Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! calls to mind other astounding works in that same genre: The Poet’s Novel. Daniel Poppick, Ben Lerner, Paul Beatty, and William Brewer are all masters of this field. They all feel the urge for distilling grand, poignant, harrowing moments of life into crystalline prose, and yet they’re also more than capable of conveying those same beautiful ideas through great sweeps of narrative and plot.

 

Daniel Poppick’s The Copywriter is a spare, funny, depressing but somehow light view of capitalism and ambition from the poet’s gaze. Ben Lerner, genius that he is, is able to toe the lines of autofiction and traditional novel to create some amazing works of fiction (most recently Transcription). His books contain both propulsive plot and lyrical beauty, with reflective awareness of the self and the world at large. There are lines from 10:04 and Leaving the Atocha Station that remain with me to this day. Paul Beatty’s The Sellout was an achievement in comedy with an edge, a new way of channeling the themes of Beatty’s poetry in a totally new form. The novel has surely received its flowers, but is never too late to revisit. And lastly, Bay Area poet William Brewer’s The Red Arrow is one of the best debut novels I’ve ever read. I wrote about it at length here, but will always be pressing this book into people’s hands: it’s about depression, writing, love, salvation, life, and hard-won joy. I hope more people join this specific Red Arrow cult fandom. I also hope more people claim devotion to that perfect genre, the Poet’s Novel.