The Poetry of Dune

Frank Herbert was a poet at heart. Weather he wrote in prose or verse the poet shone through in his writing. In his forward to The Road To Dune Bill Ransom states:

"Frank believed poetry to be the finest distillation of the language weather written in open or closed form" 

and again further on in the forward:

"Frank believed poetry was the apex of human language..." 

In a letter to a friend (sometime after writing Dune)  Herbert described his style of writing. One line demonstrates his love and need for poetry when writing:

"Much of the prose in Dune started out as Haiku and then was given minimal additional word padding to make it conform to normal English structure."
---The Road To Dune (2005) by B. Herbert & K. J. Anderson

In Book I of Dune there is a great poem recited by Jessica:

'I remember salt smoke from a beach fire

And shadows under the pines - 

Solid, clean...fixed - 

Seagulls perched at the tip of land.

White upon green...

And a wind comes through the pines

To sway the shadows;

The seagulls spread their wings,

Lift

And fill the sky with screeches.

And I hear the wind

Blowing across our beach,

And the surf,

And I see our fire

Has scorched the seaweed'

Shawn