| Author | Message | ||
| W.F. Roby
Intermediate Member Username: wfroby Post Number: 810 Registered: 03-2008 |
I'm sure this topic has already been whipped to death somewhere in the archives. But. I just want to share one of my favorites. (Book purcased from Salt . . . they're amazing) The father paced nervously in the waiting room of the abortion clinic. Outside the protesters had all been replaced by extras from a documentary on the Great Depression. They were extremely depressed and mulled about the sidewalk dragging their feet, all but one young man who couldn't get into character. He kept saying, "Things are looking up" and "At least it's not raining." Inside all was quiet. The only sounds to be heard were the soft pat of the man's loafers on the tile and the muffled scratches of the nurse's pen as she wrote notes in the margins of her romance novel. Finally the doctor emerged from behind the swinging doors with Helga. She was in a wheelchair and holding a large steel cage in her lap. "Your wife came through fine," said the doctor, "and the rabbit is as good as new." Jamey Dunham Now -- I fully expect to hear opinions about why this is NOT a poem. And I welcome them. I'm not here to shout (for once) -- I am genuinely trying to wrap my brain around the prose poem concept. So let it fly. Or post your own fave. | ||
| Richard M
Intermediate Member Username: youngjed Post Number: 723 Registered: 12-2008 |
Thanks to Will for bringing this up,as I've been wondering as he knows what merits there are in putting what would make a perfectly excellent regular poem into a prose poem. I'd also like to know that, in these ezine days, whats the difference between prose poems of the kind will identifies above and flash fiction... http://whatssoonly.blogspot.com/ | ||
| W.F. Roby
Intermediate Member Username: wfroby Post Number: 812 Registered: 03-2008 |
Unfortunately, I think we're headed for dangerous territory. You see, I refuse to believe that simply adding line breaks makes something into a poem. For instance: This is not a poem just because I've put some linebreaks in. Taking that concept to its ultimate end, removing the linebreaks from a piece of poetry doesn't automatically make it "not a poem". Some poets simply prefer their words to line up neatly. There is a historical precedent for this: The Iliad and The Odyssey were not originally printed with linebreaks, for the simple fact that they were not originally written down. Does this mean they were not poems? For me, the surprise at the end of Dunham's poem is more of a surprise when the poem is set up in a paragraph. That's all. | ||
| Richard M
Intermediate Member Username: youngjed Post Number: 724 Registered: 12-2008 |
Heading for dangerous territory? Not with me you're not. I'm all for the idea that its the quality of the language which makes something a poem. I'd say line breaks on their own don't 'do it' (but they often help both signal that its a poem, and often - but not always - render something extra with the language). I'm just wondering what makes someone choose one form for the other for a particular piece. I'm not looking for rules either, just some insights... Best Richard http://whatssoonly.blogspot.com/ | ||
| M
Board Administrator Username: mjm Post Number: 34384 Registered: 11-1998 |
I think what people fail to take into account, Roby, is that language and the way we humans use it is in a constant state of flux. And hence, definitions must (or at least should) move in complement with it. For instance, it use to be pretty easy to distinguish between poetry and prose. Poetry was metered, almost always rhymed, and had a specific, and sometimes pretty regimented structure. Prose was anything that wasn't formatted like that. And then the free verse people came along and blew all that away. Poems no longer had to have all those components of meter and rhyme and such. And lots of tradionalists were pretty angry about that. I think it was Frost who said something like (and I paraphrase) that writing free verse was like playing tennis without a net. But much as we'd like to capture something and keep definitions standard and unchanged, language mutates, and writers try new things. We went from free verse to prose poems, which really knocked things for a loop. All of a sudden, poems didn't even have to have line breaks. And so where are we now? We're in a very fluid state where it's often hard to tell the difference between poetry, prose, and all the various forms each might take. What is flash fiction other than a very, very short story? Isn't that what a prose poem is too? Personally, I enjoy the fact that strict definitions have fallen by the wayside. And I like that people with the know-how can take a strict definition and blow all to hell. You have to be the type of person who can withstand a lot of grey area and subjectivity to enjoy the fact that things can't be put clearly into specific categories so easily any more. Life outside the boundary lines and beyond the rules. Adaptability. Trying to conform to old rules and traditions is a little like riding around in a horse and buggy. Quaint, but not practical since cars came into vogue. Language moves and changes with the people who use it. So will poetry, prose, and form. This is sometimes chaotic and disturbing, especially for people who like to keep their categories distinct. But it's exciting too. For me, good writing is good writing. Personally, I don't give much of a hoot how anyone would like to categorize the writing. Or let's say, I care less what something "is" than I do whether it's good or not. And the above? Prose poem, flash fiction, poem, prose -- all of those and probably more could apply. The important question is did I enjoy it? And yes, I did. Love, M | ||
| Andrew Dufresne
Senior Member Username: beachdreamer Post Number: 2540 Registered: 01-2006 |
Elizabeth Bishop: 12:00 News 'nuff said ad | ||
| Hephaestes
Advanced Member Username: hephaestes Post Number: 1071 Registered: 12-2006 |
Jesus got up one day a little later than usual. He had been dreaming so deep there was nothing left in his head. What was it? A nightmare, dead bodies walking all around him, eyes rolled back, skin falling off. But he wasn't afraid of that. It was a beautiful day. How 'bout some coffee? Don't mind if I do. Take a little ride on my donkey, I love that donkey. Hell, I love everybody. -- James Tate This one's from Riven Doggeries Memoirs of a Hawk has some of Tate's best prose. Also Ales Debeljak is incredible. In this moment ... In this moment, in the twilight of a cold room, thunder approaches from a distance, through storm windows and dusty panes, in late afternoon, the water in the pot doesn't boil, when fish gasp under the ice, when half-asleep you tremble, as if without hope, when a pack--a herd of shivering stags left the dried marshes deep in the woods and came to the gardens in town, this fleeting instant, when the cold slices through your spine, when hardened honey cracks in jars, when the thought of a woman's hand--laid on the forehead of the dying--comes closer and closer, when from the depths of memory destroyed villages you wanted to forget begin to rise, when guilt and truth burn your stomach, when frightened pheasants are flushed from tapestries hanging on the wall, when guards leaving their posts whistle to one another, piercing the air, when a sharp stone breaks your skull, should I remind you now that your wounded body won't be any different than the shadow a solitary bush cast across the trampled earth, east of Eden? -- Ales Debeljak | ||
| W.F. Roby
Intermediate Member Username: wfroby Post Number: 813 Registered: 03-2008 |
Heph -- I LOVE that Tate example. Probably my favorite of his. Either that or the one about hats. Can't think of the name. A List of Famous Hats? M -- point well made and well taken. Unfortunately, there are many who DO care about labels, and will rough you up out back of the tool shed over it. | ||
| RGCat
Intermediate Member Username: rcat Post Number: 652 Registered: 03-2008 |
I’m not completely sold on this but I get the feeling its like Schopenhauer said, the best poems can never be written. The 2nd best can never be understood. So it’s the 3rd type we’re stuck with regardless of what we call them. As we all know Schopenhauer was a prosaic activist and that’s because, to paraphrase one of his central arguments, “language is something that should have never been.” Words eating words eating words is a rather gruesome universe to begin with, so who cares if Mickey spills gator aid on your cornflakes. True art, as Schopenhauer implied with his discussions with Jung, is the revelation of beatific radiance --- though of course, many of those refracted colors are disjointed and rather hideous to the eye that seeks the vanity of “beauty.” As fractal philosophers now know, it’s the seeming incongruity (i.e., ugliness) of asymmetry that synthesizes the center. Therefore, as quantum colliders reveal, it’s best when we smash shit together (in creative destructive terms of course). Therefore, why not write a poem that’s 50% “prose” and 50% type III as described above. Call off the dogs. Do anything you want. Act like you don’t give a fuck what anyone thinks. Just riddle the page with word bullets. Most likely, it will be you’re greatest masterpiece for 5 minutes until the mind police come... (Message edited by rcat on June 05, 2009) That’s it! That’s it! Oops, maybe not. | ||
| Gary Blankenship
Moderator Username: garydawg Post Number: 28334 Registered: 07-2001 |
Labels, we don't need no stink' labels... There is more to poetry than form. There is music/lyrics metaphor/simile emotion and its relatives alliteration word play and about a half dozen other attributes I can not remember. Hence the most poetic prose written is Chapters 1 of Grapes of Wrath and of Bleak House. I generally accept those as the line where prose and poetry merge - where a bit can be other. On the far side of prose territory, might be an auto repair manual. On the far side of poetry? There is none, it goes on forever. Smiles. Gary Celebrate Walt with Gary: http://www.poetrykit.org/pkl/tw10/tw4conte.htm | ||
| Richard M
Intermediate Member Username: youngjed Post Number: 725 Registered: 12-2008 |
Hello again everyone. Its not whether prose poems are poems that I'm interested in, its what drives people to think I'll write something as a prose poem not in verse. What they might be achieving in the reader by doing that. ANyways... Here's the other Tate that Will mentioned... The List of Famous Hats by James Tate Napoleon's hat is an obvious choice I guess to list as a famous hat, but that's not the hat I have in mind. That was his hat for show. I am thinking of his private bathing cap, which in all honesty wasn't much different than the one any jerk might buy at a corner drugstore now, except for two minor eccentricities. The first one isn't even funny: Simply it was a white rubber bathing cap, but too small. Napoleon led such a hectic life ever since his childhood, even farther back than that, that he never had a chance to buy a new bathing cap and still as a grown-up--well, he didn't really grow that much, but his head did: He was a pinhead at birth, and he used, until his death really, the same little tiny bathing cap that he was born in, and this meant that later it was very painful to him and gave him many headaches, as if he needed more. So, he had to vaseline his skull like crazy to even get the thing on. The second eccentricity was that it was a tricorn bathing cap. Scholars like to make a lot out of this, and it would be easy to do. My theory is simple-minded to be sure: that beneath his public head there was another head and it was a pyramid or something. Love to all... R http://whatssoonly.blogspot.com/ | ||
| W.F. Roby
Intermediate Member Username: wfroby Post Number: 814 Registered: 03-2008 |
Its like maths. All squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares. Maybe I have that backwards. All prose is poetry but not all poetry is prose. Can you say with a straight face that Proust is not a poet? | ||
| Fred Longworth
Senior Member Username: sandiegopoet Post Number: 6212 Registered: 05-2006 |
Actually, Will, it has to do with set theory. The set of all rectangles is inclusive of the set of all squares, but the set of all squares is inclusive of only you. Heh-heh! (Couldn't resist.) Fred YOUR FOOTNOTE ADVERTISEMENT HERE. Call 1-555-555-5555 and ask for Fred. 10% discount if you mention Wild Poetry Forum. | ||
| Gary Blankenship
Moderator Username: garydawg Post Number: 28335 Registered: 07-2001 |
Prose is the set of 4 sided figures. Poetry is the set of n sided figures where n make be equal to any negative or postive number... Smiles. Gary Celebrate Walt with Gary: http://www.poetrykit.org/pkl/tw10/tw4conte.htm | ||
| Dan Tompsett
Intermediate Member Username: db_tompsett Post Number: 622 Registered: 07-2007 |
Speaking of Steinbeck: I doubt anyone would consider this excerpt from Cannery Row to be prose poetry, but it reads like poetry to me: "Then the creeping murderer, the octopus, steals out, slowly, softly, moving like a gray mist, pretending now to be a bit of weed, now a lump of decaying meat while its evil goat eyes watch coldly. It oozes and flows toward a feeding crab, and as it comes close its yellow eyes burn and its body turns rosy with the pulsing color of anticipation and rage. Then suddenly it runs lightly on the tips of its arms, as ferociously as a charging cat. It leaps savagely on the crab, there is a puff of black fluid, and the struggling mass is obscured in the sepia cloud while the octopus murders the crab. On the exposed rocks out of water, the barnacles bubble behind their closed doors and the limpets dry out. And down to the rocks come the black flies to eat anything they can find. The sharp smell of iodine from the algae, and the lime smell of calcareous bodies and the smell of powerful protean, smell of sperm and ova fill the air. On the exposed rocks the starfish emit semen and eggs from between their rays. The smells of life and richness, of death and digestion, of decay and birth, burden the air. And salt spray blows in from the barrier where the ocean waits for its rising-tide strength to permit it back into the Great Tidal Pool again. And on the reef the whistling buoy bellows like a sad and patient bull." "People who believe a lot of crap are better off." Charles Bukowski | ||
| RGCat
Intermediate Member Username: rcat Post Number: 654 Registered: 03-2008 |
creeping slowly softly moving pretending decaying coldly feeding pulsing lightly ferociously savagely struggling powerful richness whistling poetry for sure. Maybe perhaps possibly a modifiers extravaganza? I'll leave it to others who know the proper classificationingly answer. That’s it! That’s it! Oops, maybe not. | ||
| Gary Blankenship
Moderator Username: garydawg Post Number: 28338 Registered: 07-2001 |
Think Bradbury, think The Martian Chronicles. Think Harlan Ellison. Smiles. Gary Celebrate Walt with Gary: http://www.poetrykit.org/pkl/tw10/tw4conte.htm | ||
| M
Board Administrator Username: mjm Post Number: 34385 Registered: 11-1998 |
"Unfortunately, there are many who DO care about labels, and will rough you up out back of the tool shed over it." Agreed, Roby. I've been roughed up out back of the tool shed many a time. *LOL* What I'm noticing lately, however, is a growing trend toward nonlabels. Some progressive mags are saying, and again I'm paraphrasing, "Send your prose to the prose editor, send your poetry to the poetry editor, and if you just can't figure out what the &*$# it is, just send it. We'll figure it out or we won't, but we'll print it if we think it's great." Me? I like that kind of attitude. It's how I apply myself when I get to review the submissions to Stirring. The last thing I'm thinking when I'm reading a submission batch is is this a poem? And if so, what kind? Mainly what I'm thinking is is this great writing? If it is, I say print it and we'll figure out later if we actually need to define it so we can stamp a label on it (for people who are terribly uncomfortable with things that don't have a name attached to them and would never buy that label-less can from the discount bin because they're afraid it will be cat food when what they really wanted was peas). But that's just me. I have an easier time existing in an environment that includes a bit of ambiguity. Like all these great examples people have left? I think they're terrific, and would just print them without concerning myself about what they are exactly. Let other people worry about that if they want. As to your question, Richard, "what drives people to think I'll write something as a prose poem not in verse," that's tough to answer. Most likely the same thing that's driving them to put a line break here instead of there. It's a matter of personal choice these days, and what effects you'd like to achieve. Generally speaking, line breaks introduce pauses, while lines that extend out to the right-hand margin are more flowing. You have to decide what your poem's about, and how it will be read with those pauses or without them. What way does the subject matter better lend itself? I'd say format it both ways and decide which way feels more comfortable to you. That won't make you right, and that won't make you wrong. It's just your vision. There are no absolute right or wrong answers. I guess that's why I like language a whole lot better than mathematics. I never did like sitting in math class trying to find THE right answer. Luckily, as it concerns language and poetry, I don't have to. Given the era I live in, I get to write it my way and let other people argue about it.  Love, M | ||
| Richard M
Intermediate Member Username: youngjed Post Number: 726 Registered: 12-2008 |
Thanks M, that was what I was getting at. It feels to me also that its not just pauses but the proseyness of the writing, the general - although not total absence of some of the things Gary mentioned - which is also important. That is not to say it is not good writing, or to say it is not a 'poem' but to ask what effect is achieved but doing this? So, for instance, I think we might all recognise the poetry in the Steinbeck excerpt but it was not a prose poem, and the same would apply I presume (not having ready any) the same is true of Proust, but a prose poem is often different. I suppose one answer is to anti-some of the conceits of conventional poetry and another is, I just feel like telling it how it is, but I sense there is quite a bit more going on. Anyway, noone should feel like this needs answering. I'm just taking the dog out for a walk....  Best Richard http://whatssoonly.blogspot.com/ | ||
| Perry L. Powell
New member Username: perry Post Number: 11 Registered: 05-2009 |
Do you think Finnegan's Wake is prose or poetry? And what was Gertrude Stein writing? Not that I claim to have an answer... :-) | ||
| Dan Tompsett
Intermediate Member Username: db_tompsett Post Number: 637 Registered: 07-2007 |
Here's something by Richard Hugo. The town of "White Center" (AKA Rat City) he mentions is where he was born and raised. I, too, lived there for several years: ~Letter To Kizer From Seattle~ by Richard Hugo Dear Condor: Much thanks for that telephonic support from North Carolina when I suddenly went ape in the Iowa tulips. Lord, but I'm ashamed. I was afraid, it seemed, according to the doctor of impending success, winning some poetry prizes or getting a wet kiss. The more popular I got, the softer the soft cry in my head: Don't believe them. You were never good. Then I broke and proved it. Ten successive days I alienated women I liked best. I told a coed why her poems were bad (they weren't) and didn't understand a word I said. Really warped. The phrase "I'll be all right" came out too many unsolicited times. I'm o.k. now. I'm back at the primal source of poems: wind, sea and rain, the market and the salmon. Speaking of the market, they're having a vital election here. Save the market? Tear it down? The forces of evil maintain they're trying to save it too, obscuring, of course, the issue. The forces of righteousness, me and my friends, are praying for a storm, one of those grim dark rolling southwest downpours that will leave the electorate sane. I'm the last poet to teach the Roethke chair under Heilman. He's retiring after 23 years. Most of the old gang is gone. Sol Katz is aging. Who isn't? It's close now to the end of summer and would you believe it I've ignored the Blue Moon. I did go to White Center, you know, my home town, and the people there, many are the same, but also aging, balking, remarkably polite and calm. A man whose name escapes me said he thinks he had known me, the boy who went alone to Longfellow Creek and who laughed and cried for no reason. The city is huge, maybe three quarters of a million and lots of crime. They are indicting the former chief of police. Sorry to be so rambling. I eat lunch with J. Hillis Miller, brilliant and nice as they come, in the faculty club, overlooking the lake, much of it now filled in. And I tour old haunts, been twice to Kapowsin. One trout. One perch. One poem. Take care, oh wisest of condors. Love. Dick. Thanks again. "People who believe a lot of crap are better off." Charles Bukowski |
