Marble Faun and a Green Bough: Poems

by William Faulkner

A collection of poetry by the literary great William Faulkner.

Genres: Poetry, American

67 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1960

About the author

William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer. He is best known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, a stand-in for Lafayette County where he spent most of his life. A Nobel laureate, Faulkner is one of the most celebrated writers of American literature and often is considered the greatest writer of Southern literature.
Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, and raised in Oxford, Mississippi. During World War I, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force, but did not serve in combat. Returning to Oxford, he attended the University of Mississippi for three semesters before dropping out. He moved to New Orleans, where he wrote his first novel Soldiers' Pay (1925). He went back to Oxford and wrote Sartoris (1927), his first work set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County. In 1929, he published The Sound and the Fury. The following year, he wrote As I Lay Dying. Later that decade, he wrote Light in August, Absalom, Absalom! and The Wild Palms. He also worked as a screenwriter, contributing to Howard Hawks's To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep, adapted from Raymond Chandler's novel. The former film, adapted from Ernest Hemingway's novel, is the only film with contributions by two Nobel laureates.
Faulkner's reputation grew following publication of Malcolm Cowley's The Portable Faulkner, and he was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature for "his powerful and unique contribution to the modern American novel." He is the only Mississippi-born Nobel laureate. Two of his works, A Fable (1954) and The Reivers (1962), won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Faulkner died from a heart attack on July 6, 1962, following a fall from his horse the month before. Ralph Ellison called him "the greatest artist the South has produced".

Reviews

[J · Rating 1 out of 5]

Holy cow that was pretty bad. I'm glad Faulkner focused on fiction. "The Marble Faun" (1919) was sing-song and anachronistic even for the time period - Faulker is in his early 20s and wandering through the countryside looking at clouds and channeling the Romantics.

"A Green Bough" is from 1933 and is better, more modern in style but still just dull. I'm not anti-Faulkner either, I love his fiction - just his fiction.

[Jerome Berglund · Rating 5 out of 5]

When one is getting feverish in the cabin, could use a vacation somewhere enchanting, this would be a trip I'd highly recommend taking, at such a time.

A refreshing breath of fresh air and whimsy, you don't need to leave quarantine to enjoy.

<3

[Juliette Duras · Rating 2 out of 5]

de très belles choses, mais … l’inspiration romantique … la nature … non … on veut le Faulkner du Bruit et la Fureur, on veut l’atroce, on veut ce qu’on ne trouve, que partiellement, à la fin ;;;

car nulle poitrine ne s’interpose : et elle ne peut s’atténuer.

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Poetry. It's really hard for me to criticize someone's poetry. The imagery is good. It's not too heavy handed, it scans pretty well. That's about it.

[Nicholas · Rating 1 out of 5]

Just awful.

[Patricia N. McLaughlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the Preface of this double volume of Faulkner’s poetry, critic Phil Stone writes:

“It is inevitable that this book should bear traces of other poets; probably well-informed people have by this time learned that a poet does not spring full-fledged from the brow of Jove. He does have to be born with the native impulse, but he learns his trade from other poets by apprenticeship, just as a lawyer or a carpenter or a bricklayer learns his. It is inevitable that traces of apprenticeship should appear in a first book but a man who has real talent will grow, will leave these things behind, will finally bring forth a flower that could have grown in no garden but his own.” (pp. 7-8)

In these poems, primarily of his youth, Faulkner relies too heavily on the style of the masters he is copying, mostly Romantics like Shelley and Wordsworth. There is no trace of the peculiar slant of sunlight or blue forested hills or blood-red soil of North Mississippi in this poetry, no distinct voice tempered by the infernal heat and sticky humidity of the region, none of the essence of that particular part of the South that Faulkner made famous in his prose works. Rather, the young author of these poems harkens back to the British Isles, the land of the masters he’s imitating—not his homeland. For instance, the poet refers to nightingales (pp. 29, 33) in The Marble Faun, which are native to Europe, not the United States. No trills of the mockingbird, the state bird, or scent of the piney woods in these lyrics, green as grass.

Faulkner’s real talent would grow when he finished his apprenticeship and embraced his “native impulse,” becoming so “steeped in the soul of his native land, a Southerner by every instinct, and, more than that, a Mississippian” (Stone, p. 8), such that Faulkner would finally bring forth flowers—The Sound and the Fury; As I Lay Dying; Light in August; Absalom, Absalom—that could have grown in no other garden but his own: the mythical Yoknapatawpha County.

XLIV
If there be grief, then let it be but rain,
And this but silver grief for grieving’s sake,
If these green woods be dreaming here to wake
Within my heart, if I should rouse again.

But I shall also, for where is my death
While in these blue hills slumbrous overhead
I’m rooted like a tree. Though I be dead,
This earth that holds me fast will find me breath.

[heychipx · Rating 5 out of 5]

Merci pour les larmes

[Courtney Johnston · Rating 2 out of 5]

Yet more adventures in poetry, selected on shelf-appeal (ie. I know the name of the poet or the publisher, and the volume is ~100 pages long).

I've not read any Faulkner. Or Hemingway, for that matter. In fact, I'm probably quite light on the twentieth century lions. But I have a strong assumption of what their writing will be like: virile, muscular, taut, manly.

On that account, 'The Marble Faun' and 'The Green Bough' were not at all what I was expecting. 'The Marble Faun' is pretty and romantic and - frankly - rather dull, all trees-that-are-tall-and-slim-like-women, and women-who-are-tall-and-slim-like-trees. Here's the opening stanza

The poplar trees sway to and fro
That through this gray old garden go
Like slender girls with nodding heads,
Whispering above the beds
Of tall tufted hollyhocks,
Of purple asters and of phlox;
Caught in the daisies' dreaming gold
Recklessly scattered wealth untold
About their slender graceful feet
Like poised dancers, lithe and fleet.
The candled flames of roses here
Gutter gold in this still air,
And clouds glide down the western sky
To watch this sun-drenched revery,
while the poplars' shining crests
Lightly brush their silvered breasts,
Dreaming not of winter snows
That soon will shake their maiden rows.

The second collection, 'The Green Bough', was published nine years after 'The Marble Faun'. It's more experimental, verging into free verse in places, but still feels like the writer's heart (or talent) isn't in it. Occasionally there's a sexy or dark image, but mostly I was doing that shaming thing - reading just to get to the end.

This weekend - Stevie Smith.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a reproduction of Faulkner's two volumes of poetry: The Marble Faun, issued in 1924 by The Four Seas Company, and A Green Bough published in 1933 by Harrison Smith and Robert Haas. Even though Faulkner considered himself a "failed poet", these are good examples of the writing of his youth, reflecting pastoral themes of unrequited love, love of nature, and often, melancholy.

[Aya · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love Faulkner.
I'm not finishing these. The introduction might have been the best part, a glimpse of Faulkner, talking about baseball and refusing to make eye contact, before he became a faded icon.