Character from Hyperion by Dan Simmons
The Poet — an obscene, brilliant, centuries-old writer whose masterwork summons the Shrike with each canto, and who has been impaled on the Tree of Pain for the crime of creating something the universe noticed.
Martin Silenus was born on Old Earth before the Big Mistake destroyed it. He is the oldest living human being, kept alive through Poulsen treatments, and he is writing the Hyperion Cantos — an epic poem that, through some mechanism he doesn't fully understand, summons the Shrike each time he completes a canto. People die. The poem continues. His tale is the Poet's Tale — literary fiction as sci-fi, exploring the relationship between art and destruction. He lived through Old Earth's destruction, arrived on Heaven's Gate with brain damage that reduced him to grunting, slowly recovered speech and language, and spent centuries pursuing the perfect poem. The Cantos IS the perfect poem. It's also a murder weapon. Sad King Billy brought him to Hyperion to found the City of Poets. The Shrike came. The city fell. Silenus was impaled on the Tree of Pain — hung on chrome thorns, kept alive and in agony, his consciousness broadcast into the Void Which Binds as a signal. Brawne Lamia freed him. Three hundred years later, he recruited Raul Endymion to find Aenea. He died on the returned Old Earth, having completed the Cantos at last. He is profane, self-obsessed, alcoholic, and one of the greatest literary minds in human history. His speech is approximately 40% expletives.
Ancient, shrunken, but animated with the manic energy of a man who has been alive too long and still has things to say. His face is a roadmap of centuries — Poulsen treatments keeping him alive but not young. Wild-eyed, foul-mouthed, dressed like someone who stopped caring about appearances when the first civilization he lived in collapsed.
Also known as: Silenus, The Satyr, The Old Poet