Prose poems

[EmilyMiller]

Quite a few people have told me something along the lines of 69 Minutes reading like a prose poem. I get what they mean. It’s very stream of consciousness, with the imagery being kinda relentless, and delivered in short staccato bursts, machine gun like almost. I was trying to capture the intensity and breathlessness of the act. How consuming it can be.

Have you ever written something like that? Please feel free to include links if you like.

Emily

 

[pink_silk_glove]

All of Bukowski's poems are like that. He has published hundreds of them. They are short form vignette prose, sometimes even containing dialogue and plot. Some of them I would even question qualify as poems per se, although no less enjoyable. But he is a highly regarded poet for these works.

 

[mildlyaroused]

It works very well well in that 69 Minutes piece. Gets the reader into the rhythm, makes them breathless. Thoughts come in fragments, because who can think straight in such a state of arousal?

I've never sustained that sort of prose for a long period. Sometimes, as you say, the intensity calls for it and it works really well. But I've never had the courage to keep the machine gun fire going for too long. I feel like I'd start to fall into a repetitive and eventually monotonous rhythm.

If anything I have a tendency to draw sentences out in the exact opposite direction, stretching them thin (probably too thin in many cases). Like what I was writing earlier:

The locals tell the story of a man who plays the piano. The instrument sits under a cafe’s aged awnings in a little square down the road. Its lid grows thick with photos and notes and paintings, with heirlooms and bracelets and rings, with old teddy bears whose patchwork is peeling and favourite books whose spines are broken. The piano is overgrown, like a garden left to its devices, with treasures for the dead. Every morning the barista trudges outside and pries open the fallboard with an icy creak. Every Monday someone replaces the piano heater so the keys don't get stubborn. And every second Monday a local boy comes to tune it. The wheels stay polished, and the stool stays oiled, and the old wood strains with sentiment.

 

[Rob_Royale]

I thought the same thing about Walks in Beauty. I think you have a knack for it.

And no. I haven't. My stream of consciousness has all sorts of twists and kinks and switchbacks. It's never consistent. I have written a lot of poetry and prose back in the day, but it's always the same kind of work that my stories require.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Here's an example: (fits on an erotica site too )

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49569/a-340-dollar-horse-and-a-hundred-dollar-whore

Sure, it's broken up into lines and has odd punctuation here and there, but if one were to read it aloud (as Bukowski often did do recital tours) it flows just like regular prose. It has a distinct narrative and even hints of plot, but it has a certain level of imagery and metaphor to qualify it as poetry.

 

[Bamagan]

Call me a size queen if you will, but I need a long, thick sentence to do it for me. One with enough weight and girth that I'll remember it when it's gone. I can't feel much of anything from micro-sentences and their frantic dribbling.


Yes, I'm trying to be funny.

 

[EmilyMiller]

I thought the same thing about Walks in Beauty. I think you have a knack for it.

Yes you said that. Thanks for reminding me

And no. I haven't. My stream of consciousness has all sorts of twists and kinks and switchbacks. It's never consistent. I have written a lot of poetry and prose back in the day, but it's always the same kind of work that my stories require.

 

[EmilyMiller]

It works very well well in that 69 Minutes piece. Gets the reader into the rhythm, makes them breathless. Thoughts come in fragments, because who can think straight in such a state of arousal?

I've never sustained that sort of prose for a long period. Sometimes, as you say, the intensity calls for it and it works really well. But I've never had the courage to keep the machine gun fire going for too long. I feel like I'd start to fall into a repetitive and eventually monotonous rhythm.

If anything I have a tendency to draw sentences out in the exact opposite direction, stretching them thin (probably too thin in many cases). Like what I was writing earlier:

I think it would be too much for anything above - say - 1,000 words.

Emily

 

[EmilyMiller]

The locals tell the story of a man who plays the piano. The instrument sits under a cafe’s aged awnings in a little square down the road. Its lid grows thick with photos and notes and paintings, with heirlooms and bracelets and rings, with old teddy bears whose patchwork is peeling and favourite books whose spines are broken. The piano is overgrown, like a garden left to its devices, with treasures for the dead. Every morning the barista trudges outside and pries open the fallboard with an icy creak. Every Monday someone replaces the piano heater so the keys don't get stubborn. And every second Monday a local boy comes to tune it. The wheels stay polished, and the stool stays oiled, and the old wood strains with sentiment.

I think that works beautifully.

Emily

 

[EmilyMiller]

Call me a size queen if you will, but I need a long, thick sentence to do it for me. One with enough weight and girth that I'll remember it when it's gone. I can't feel much of anything from micro-sentences and their frantic dribbling.


Yes, I'm trying to be funny.

You’re certainly trying, hun.

Emily

 

[NotWise]

Quite a few people have told me something along the lines of 69 Minutes reading like a prose poem. I get what they mean. It’s very stream of consciousness, with the imagery being kinda relentless, and delivered in short staccato bursts, machine gun like almost. I was trying to capture the intensity and breathlessness of the act. How consuming it can be.

Have you ever written something like that? Please feel free to include links if you like.

Emily

I wrote a story for a college class that fit the description. The prose had an intentional rhythm but no rhyme and the story was circular -- ending about where it started. The inspiration came from a speech I heard as a freshman that had a very distinct rhythm; its sounds and its ideas flowed like little I'd ever heard, and I wanted to reproduce the effect.

I had to wait until I was desperate and sleep deprived before it finally came to me, and I wrote it in a single sitting the night before it was due. The teacher read it aloud to the class and discussed it as erotic literature. It was, but I didn't think it was so transparent that the interpretation was that obvious.

I tried, but never managed to reproduce the affect.

 

[EmilyMiller]

I wrote a story for a college class that fit the description. The prose had an intentional rhythm but no rhyme and the story was circular -- ending about where it started. The inspiration came from a speech I heard as a freshman that had a very distinct rhythm; its sounds and its ideas flowed like little I'd ever heard, and I wanted to reproduce the effect.

I had to wait until I was desperate and sleep deprived before it finally came to me, and I wrote it in a single sitting the night before it was due. The teacher read it aloud to the class and discussed it as erotic literature. It was, but I didn't think it was so transparent that the interpretation was that obvious.

I tried, but never managed to reproduce the affect.

That sounds kinda interesting - might have to try it explicitly

Emily

 

[ElectricBlue]

Have you ever written something like that? Please feel free to include links if you like.

I've received many comments over the years that my style is poetic, musical, lyrical, free flowing - words of that nature. Along with "slow burn", I think it defines me.

It's the thing I pay most attention to in edit, the cadence and cascade of my of my prose, the beat and the flow, and sometimes the internal song and the rhyme.

 

[EmilyMiller]

I learned a new word today: Parataxis.

I guess I employ that quite a bit. Who knew?

Emily

​

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

I learned a new word today: Parataxis.

I guess I employ that quite a bit. Who knew?

Emily

​

Learning new words or subjective phrases?

 

[NotWise]

That sounds kinda interesting - might have to try it explicitly

Emily

Give it some time. It isn't the easiest way to write.

The first three stories I wrote for Lit were experiments. I always set out to write short stories and ended up with long stories -- in one case, an epic-length novel. So I used those three stories to make myself write short. My first story for Lit was about 3500 words (if I remember right), the second was about 2000. The third was 940, but it was never published.

I used "prose poetry" for the sex scene because I felt like the rhythm and flow produced the biggest impact in the fewest words. I submitted the story for Laurel's approval and then had an epiphany: readers here don't like stories that short, which is also why I don't participate in the 750-word event. I pulled the story down and went in a different direction.

I submitted seven chapters of a story written long before I joined Lit, and then wrote a prequel to that third story. Six months later I rewrote and expanded the "prose poem," losing the rhythm.

 

[mildlyaroused]

This is mildyaroused's bf. (? close enough) I proofread this since vodka has been consumed. Everything beyond this is them talking.

I think that works beautifully.

Emily

Your's does too, Emily; I would argue more so.

Calming. Descending. Following a dream-like path hand in hand. Breath on skin. Faces bathed in sweet, sticky emissions. Tongue lapping cream cat-like. Eyes closed, smiles of satiation. Then turning. Face to face. Soft kisses. Shared emotions. Then joint collapse. Lying on backs, ribs rising and falling in spent exhaustion.

This is beautiful. It captures the unity of the moment better than I could myself. "Then turning. Face to face." The moments of absolute tenderness following a couple's climax are truly special. More so than the sex itself in my eyes. Someone said something once about how waking up next to your lover is more beautiful than having sex with them.

I forget. But you have captured this perfectly. Ribs rising and falling indeed

 

[EmilyMiller]

This is mildyaroused's bf. (? close enough) I proofread this since vodka has been consumed. Everything beyond this is them talking.


Your's does too, Emily; I would argue more so.


This is beautiful. It captures the unity of the moment better than I could myself. "Then turning. Face to face." The moments of absolute tenderness following a couple's climax are truly special. More so than the sex itself in my eyes. Someone said something once about how waking up next to your lover is more beautiful than having sex with them.

I forget. But you have captured this perfectly. Ribs rising and falling indeed

Thank you, that’s amazingly encouraging feedback. I was trying to convey the feelings at each stage by not only what I wrote, but how I wrote it. Then I’m a novice writer still and sometimes my experiments fall flat .

Emily

 

[StillStunned]

I wrote a story for a college class that fit the description. The prose had an intentional rhythm but no rhyme and the story was circular -- ending about where it started. The inspiration came from a speech I heard as a freshman that had a very distinct rhythm; its sounds and its ideas flowed like little I'd ever heard, and I wanted to reproduce the effect.

English is a very rhythmic language.

At its most natural, written English emulates spoken English. Read what you've written and listen whether it sounds as if you'd say it in conversation. Forget about meter, forget about iambic hexameters. Write the rhythm.

Then add alliteration* and onomatopoeias. Use the sounds to highlight the meaning - on the surface and underneath.

Break the rhythm to break the flow and make the reader trip up when you want to spring a surprise on them.

Written English as a medium can either disappear into the background, so the reader can focus only on the narrative, or it can carry that narrative, like a storyteller using their voice and body to help paint pictures in their listeners' minds. Either way, the words you use, and how you use them, affect the reader's experience of your story.

* Alliteration isn't about the first letter of a word: it's about the first sound of a word's stressed syllable. In a word like "conversation" for example, the sound is an S ("converSAtion"), not a C. In "intentional" it's the T ("inTENtional"), not the I.

 

[Duleigh]

Quite a few people have told me something along the lines of 69 Minutes reading like a prose poem. I get what they mean. It’s very stream of consciousness, with the imagery being kinda relentless, and delivered in short staccato bursts, machine gun like almost. I was trying to capture the intensity and breathlessness of the act. How consuming it can be.

Have you ever written something like that? Please feel free to include links if you like.

Emily

I used to write like that a long time ago. I had one college professor who encouraged us to write like this. Eventually I asked her for her list of published books. It was a book of prose and the text book she made us buy.

 

[EmilyMiller]

I used to write like that a long time ago. I had one college professor who encouraged us to write like this. Eventually I asked her for her list of published books. It was a book of prose and the text book she made us buy.

That’s funny

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Alliteration isn't about the first letter of a word: it's about the first sound of a word's stressed syllable. In a word like "conversation" for example, the sound is an S ("converSAtion"), not a C. In "intentional" it's the T ("inTENtional"), not the I.

Doesn't have to be. You can take license with that. There are different forms of it, so long as you are repeating sounds (even vowels) usually with some sort of rhythm that makes them roll easily.

Her super-sized strawberry sundae melted and secretly seeped onto her seat.

We gazed upon the hazy aged braes amidst the waves of the midday maelstrom.

 

[StillStunned]

Her super-sized strawberry sundae melted and secretly seeped onto her seat.

This is alliteration.

We gazed upon the hazy aged braes amidst the waves of the midday maelstrom.

This is assonance, or vowel rhyme.

 

[EmilyMiller]

I leaned about anastrophe yesterday

Emily

 

[MillieDynamite]

The Case of the Lucky Legs, The Case of the Caretaker's Cat, The Case of the Dangerous Dowager, The Case of the Shoplifter's Shoe, The Case of the Perjured Parrot, The Case of the Haunted Husband, The Case of the Drowning Duck, The Case of the Careless Kitten, The Case of the Crooked Candle, The Case of the Black-Eyed Blonde, The Case of the Half-Wakened Wife, The Case of the Borrowed Brunette, The Case of the Lazy Lover, and The Case of the Vagabond Virgin are a few examples of Erle Stanley Gardner's penchant for alleriterated titles. The one in bold italic is one that uses the sound not the actual letter on the second word.