How does a poet turn into a novelist, what are the skills or talents that he takes from one art to the other, and what are the preoccupations, themes, or subjects in the poems themselves? These are some of the questions that one raises about Daniel Defoe , who is far better known as a novelist than as a poet. In the not-too-distant past it was more customary to refer to his "verses" than to his poems--and to add such qualifiers as "execrable." In recent years, however, a few critics have begun to pay serious attention to the poems and to discover artistry in them and a reflection of his quick and subtle mind. Defoe is an author still being assessed critically. No complete edition of all of his writings exists. It is not certain that he wrote the 566 works assigned to him by John Robert Moore in the...