Prose Poetry

[Palba_Noruda]

I enjoy the prose poems of Russell Edson and David Young. I like Edson because he doesn't do confessional poetry. He does surrealism well. He doesn't try to be profound. He entertains. What a breath of fresh air. (He may also be a misogynist, I'm still working my way through his material. I am not endorsing that part of his material.)

Young is more confessional, but the one linked below is brilliant whether it's considered confessional or not. I believe he borders on being a modern-day imagist.

http://www.webdelsol.com/LITARTS/edson/

http://webdelsol.com/tpp/tpp5/tpp5_youngb.html

So poets of Lit, what's the deal with prose poetry? Do you like it? Do you write it?

 

[Angeline]

I like both examples, Palba. I'm not sure I understand the distinction between prose poetry (like in your two examples) and free verse. I do see that the examples tend toward complete sentences and maybe use more adjectives and transition words (e.g., and, but, for). And the ellipses points are a stylistic choice also made by lots of people who would describe what they're writing as free verse. I'm thrown by the shape of these poems. Didn't prose poems used to have longer lines? I picture them as having a more prose-like shape, but maybe the standard changed?

I just wrote a poem today that maybe by the look of your poems could be prose poetry, so maybe I like it more than I realize. I dunno. Educate me, Palba? Poets?

 

[twelveoone]

So poets of Lit, what's the deal with prose poetry? Do you like it? Do you write it?

you have to define it, if you can't really define poetry, how can you define prose poetry, the term probably came from the efforts of Baudelaire and Rimbaud, both who wrote in highly constrained forms, and desired to go outside the forms, bflagsst will correct me if I'm wrong.

here is an excerpt, because of copyright, copyright; the ellipses are in the poem

A huge shoe mounts up from the horizon, squealing and grinding forward on small wheels, even as a man sitting to breakfast on his veranda is suddenly engulfed in a great shadow, almost the size of the night . . .

line broken

A huge shoe mounts up from the horizon,
squealing and grinding forward on small
wheels, even as a man sitting to breakfast on
his veranda is suddenly engulfed in a great
shadow, almost the size of the night . . .

Let's turn the question back to you, why is this poetry? What is he doing? I'm DA'ing here, I'm the free verse guy, remember?

to be fair the shoe continues onward, an old woman is involved (get it) and he return to his breakfast
but
sees it's been wounded, the yolk of one of his
eggs is bleeding . . .

If you can't answer, the Why is this poetry part, then why do you like it?

Followed by a third.
Why do I not see you over in New Poems?
Granted, Mr. Edson is better than the parade of stick figures fucking to the blaring tunes of cliche

 

[twelveoone]

the rest of Mr. Edson's poems are in prose format, including Mr. Brain, why the line breaks on the first page is a mystery to me.
links further to here.
The Prose Poem:
An International Journalhttp://webdelsol.com/tpp/

a prose poem sans surreal

Personally I have read some prose poetry that was intriguing. Some amusing. Most come of as quirky and slightly pretentious.
suddenly engulfed in a great shadow, (I could see a use for this if it was funny

sees it's been wounded, the yolk of one of his
eggs is bleeding . . .

Constantly fusing and confusing the banal and the bizarre,
interesting choice of words

and I'm not going to attempt to speak for bflagsst, except to say, I would not be surprised if our opinions where the same on some of these things.

 

[Setanta84]

I like both examples, Palba. I'm not sure I understand the distinction between prose poetry (like in your two examples) and free verse. I do see that the examples tend toward complete sentences and maybe use more adjectives and transition words (e.g., and, but, for). And the ellipses points are a stylistic choice also made by lots of people who would describe what they're writing as free verse. I'm thrown by the shape of these poems. Didn't prose poems used to have longer lines? I picture them as having a more prose-like shape, but maybe the standard changed?

I just wrote a poem today that maybe by the look of your poems could be prose poetry, so maybe I like it more than I realize. I dunno. Educate me, Palba? Poets?

The best way to tell the difference between a free verse poem and a prose poem is to read it aloud. Verse and prose have very different ways of working with the music of the language in which they are authored. What drives that difference?

Meaning. A poem is somewhat divorced from meaning in the sense that encoding information is not the primary objective of the language in poetry. This is not true of prose. The point of language in prose is to convey meaning.

Because of this difference, a poem that is a work of poetry first and foremost--and executed well--will usually have the feel of a musical composition, whereas a poem that is a hybrid of prose and poetry will have a more avant garde rhythm.

 

[twelveoone]

Meaning. A poem is somewhat divorced from meaning in the sense that encoding information is not the primary objective of the language in poetry. This is not true of prose. The point of language in prose is to convey meaning.

Oh?
you may be confusing verse with poetry, I was under the impression poetry was supposed to convey more meaning in less space than prose. the encoding of information is of a high order than prose.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Types_of_Ambiguity_%28Empson%29

in other words it is not that simple

 

[Setanta84]

Oh?
you may be confusing verse with poetry, I was under the impression poetry was supposed to convey more meaning in less space than prose. the encoding of information is of a high order than prose.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Types_of_Ambiguity_%28Empson%29

in other words it is not that simple

No, I think you're misreading me and treating a reference expressing a single view of criticism as a knockdown counterpoint, which it isn't.

The primary mission of language in a poem is not encoding information. If it were, most examples of poetry would be examples of poor writing. Consider, what gets the most meaning across most efficiently and effectively, "Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?/Thou art more lovely and temperate" or "I hold the utmost regard for the virtues of your person, physical and otherwise"? Poetry arrives at meaning in a different way.

The entire point of prose, on the other hand, is encoding information. Prose is meant to tell you something concretely.

 

[twelveoone]

No, I think you're misreading me and treating a reference expressing a single view of criticism as a knockdown counterpoint, which it isn't.

The primary mission of language in a poem is not encoding information. If it were, most examples of poetry would be examples of poor writing. Consider, what gets the most meaning across most efficiently and effectively, "Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?/Thou art more lovely and temperate" or "I hold the utmost regard for the virtues of your person, physical and otherwise"? Poetry arrives at meaning in a different way.

The entire point of prose, on the other hand, is encoding information. Prose is meant to tell you something concretely.

no, the rest of what you said was good. and poetry does arrive at meaning a different way. I take serious issue with the "encoding information" part.
in other words it is not that simple, interesting Shakespeare, eh, Empson covers Shake extensively.
Do you mean to say "Prose is meant to tell you something specifically."?
The difference between connotation and detonation? Paraphrasing another poet here, the difference between poetry and prose, is the fact that you the reader have to put more effort into decoding poetry than prose. Which would mean the poet has to put more effort into the encoding. Poetry arrives at a manifold of meaning.
In your two samples what says more?
"I hold the utmost regard for the virtues of your person, physical and otherwise"
I decode as, yeh, you too.
"Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?/Thou art more lovely and temperate"
Really? I'm flattered, now I really have to think, what does this person mean by that? Hot and sticky? More lovely and temperate? I hope so.
It is not that simple.
In prose the object is for the writer to create the "story", in poetry the reader does.
I get the feeling, you haven't read much poetry, in depth, now why did I italicize depth, on one level, I could mean extensively (but I suspect you have) on another I could mean deeply (there I suspect you haven't), otherwise we would not be having this conversation.
Now I think you may also be saying that the rhythm itself will add a meaning to the words, and I could show you examples where a change changes the meaning, but that in itself is a massive project, which I don't have time for.

 

[twelveoone]

Consider, what gets the most meaning across most efficiently and effectively,
comedy or instruction manual
would be another two examples, I would hope the instruction manual


but comedy works because it is encoded, the instruction manual works if it is specific, the function is different, I read the instruction manual because I want to put some shit together, I like comedy because I got the shit

 

[butters]

Oh?
you may be confusing verse with poetry, I was under the impression poetry was supposed to convey more meaning in less space than prose. the encoding of information is of a higher order than prose.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Types_of_Ambiguity_%28Empson%29

in other words it is not that simple

i would have to agree; it's not all on the surface, and some words or phrases have a duality or more of meanings that, taken together and utilising the reader's own interpretation/experience, broaden the piece considerably. multi-layering can make a tardis of a poem. if it is very subtle, it may remain hidden from lots of readers and therefore still 'encoded'. working out the key to the code can be very rewarding. how many bother attempting to decode and how many can't be bothered to try is debatable.

• Two or more meanings are resolved into one. Empson characterizes this as using two different metaphors at once.
  
  
• Two ideas that are connected through context can be given in one word simultaneously.
  

 

[todski28]

Funnily enough the word Fuck has so many meanings and connotations that if a different set of vocabulary is used with it, it will change the meaning and intent, or it can serve a multi layer in itself

Fuck me poetry is amazing

 

[bflagsst]

I haven't read the links in the OP, but this is always an interesting discussion. Language uses metaphor and allusion as the God tier of expression because it holds the most information in the least amount of space. English speakers reading an English language poem have a distinct advantage over non-native English speakers who weren't raised in the myth and metaphor of the poem's origin.

The argument for prose-poetry even being a thing is pretty much: Prose is incapable of conveying the amount of information I want to express in this small space, I'm going to utilize the tools of poetry to help me in my expression.

Or, I'm going to tell a story utilizing the minimal constraints of what can constitute poetry in this culture. What are these minimal tools? Metaphor and allusion to elicit different emotions, then probably bits and pieces from the general bag of poetic tricks: alliteration, half-rhyme etc.

Setanta84 may think that poetry is poetry due to the bag of tricks, the sounds that poetry makes compared to prose. It's certainly an important point, that poetry is genuinely more 'musical' than prose and prose-poetry should take some of the musicality on. But it's problematic to say poetry or prose have different primary missions beyond expressing something.

The bag of tricks, the concentration on meter or rhyme or heavily referential(metaphor) is the reason poetry can 'encode' more information in less space than prose.

"Hope is the thing with feathers / That perches in the soul, / And sings the tune without the words, / And never stops at all,"

I can list some of the references within the allusion and metaphor if you want, it probably took a few thousand years to gather the information contained in just the first line. But the point is, in poetry you're given multiple places to plug-in with your life experience and you can get some wonderful things or maybe nothing at all.

 

[todski28]

Please list some bflagsst, because without training, or extension in poetry itself all I get from those lines is a little yellow canary that is singing nothing, all I get is a surface literal meaning and a sense that I am missing something far more profound. I get that sense of something else is there but I am missing it in a lot of the better poems and it leaves me trying to learn more so I'm not just grasping an icebergs tip. Before rowing away shaking my head at what I could have seen.

 

[bogusagain]

Prose is incapable of conveying the amount of information I want to express in this small space, I'm going to utilize the tools of poetry to help me in my expression.

Surely that isn't true or we would write our legal documents in poetic form rather than in complex Latin laden prose full of conexts, criterias and provisos etc etc.

Surely poetry, in many ways is like painting and music, it makes allusions, which is why a poem, a painting and a piece of music, can mean different things to different people depending on the experience of the reader/listener,viewer?

I would have thought the job of the poet/artist/musicians was to open up the imagination of the reader using signifiers to induce empathy.

 

[Angeline]

The best way to tell the difference between a free verse poem and a prose poem is to read it aloud. Verse and prose have very different ways of working with the music of the language in which they are authored. What drives that difference?

Meaning. A poem is somewhat divorced from meaning in the sense that encoding information is not the primary objective of the language in poetry. This is not true of prose. The point of language in prose is to convey meaning.

Because of this difference, a poem that is a work of poetry first and foremost--and executed well--will usually have the feel of a musical composition, whereas a poem that is a hybrid of prose and poetry will have a more avant garde rhythm.

See here is the problem I have with your explanation. You say verse and prose have different ways of working with the language. Whose verse and whose prose? Verse as I understand it is rhymed, but what about free verse (unrhymed)? And what about a writer like Virginia Woolf, for example? Her novel Orlando sounds more like poetry than prose to me but the lines stretch to the standard margins, so it must be prose right? Here's a quote from it~

It is these pauses that are our undoing. It is then that sedition enters the fortress and our troops rise in insurrection. Once before he had paused, and love with its horrid rout, its shawms, its cymbals, and its heads with gory locks torn from the shoulders had burst in....Now again he paused, and into the breach thus made, leapt Ambition, the harridan, and Poetry, the witch, and Desire of Fame, the strumpet; all joined hands and made of his heart their dancing ground.
~ Orlando, Virginia Woolf

What information is that encoding, beyond that someone is thinking about love and what might take its place in his heart? And that is not an unusual excerpt. Most of the novel is like that.

You say that meaning is the difference. Doesn't all poetry (unless it's really bad poetry) carry meaning, communicate some kind of information (albeit not by describing)? Even when a poem appears to be utter nonsense, like, say, Jabberwocky, that too has a meaning (unless, as I said, it's utter nonsense because the person who wrote it can't write). My poems always have information encoded in them, not the same as a piece of newswriting or a train schedule, I hope, but meaning is there and intended. Does that mean I've really been writing prose all along?

By your definition Shakespeare wrote poetry; TS Eliot, William Carlos Williams and EE Cummings wrote prose poetry? I'm sorry but that makes no sense to me if for no other reason than that these poets wrote before the prose poetry label existed. By your definition, Billy Collins is a prose poet and I bet he doesn't think of himself as one (yes 1201, Billy again ).

I appreciate your response, but I still don't see any major difference between prose poetry and free verse than shape. In the past I would have said you can tell the difference by where the line breaks, but now apparently that rule is out. This is why I don't think labels beyond "I like these" and "I don't like those" work too well in poetry.

 

[Desejo]

Great discussion. I don't want to break the flow, but at some point I am interested in knowing why it is that poetry "must" be linked to musicality and the sound*. Sound and appearance are factors in my mind - they can enhance poems, but they are not critical. The way in which words play upon associations in the reader- in meaning or emotions, for example, is critical.

Does this mean, for example, that a deaf person could not write poetry?

*obviously if you are writing in form this doesn't apply, but I still think the meaning is more important than the sounds.

 

[darkmaas]

I think this thread is suffering from a taxonomy paradox.

We start by saying there is prose and poetry. Black and white and, for the most part, sufficient. But then things get a bit greyer and we add new boxes (for clarity of course). Blank verse to cope with poetry that doesn't rhyme. Prose poetry for those who don't like a ragged right edge to their text block. Poetic prose for a slightly blander shade. All good if it takes us somewhere useful.

But here's the paradox. More categories for dicing up a continuum doesn't do anything useful (beyond having a few categories) except to keep taxonomistic literati occupied over drinks after a reading. The cost of all the subcategories is a disincentive to engage in poetry at all because its obviously too complicated.

The thread started out well with a discussion of Edson's and Young's poems, imho, but to discuss the quality of their work as it relates to a descriptor is a waste.

On another note (I'm sorry Setanta84); to suggest that the poetry end of the spectrum does not encode information is just wrong but bflagsst has dealt with that quite ably thank you.

::

 

[twelveoone]

as if by magic, the poets show up, they all seem to have some knowledge of some sort of code, even speaking a kind of code.
Ange - point! never saw it that way, but verse has more than one meaning. Verse (without the Free attached) tends towards a simplicity of meaning, but with a rhyme scheme and the dreaded metre. Billy is also a comedian, as are the better versers, again a coding.

Also one of the line broke poems, showed up in a link as prose format.

todski, the word "fuck" -true, however overused, same the word "love", same as cliches, they tend to have no meaning, because they do not engage the reader.

And why did I think bflagsst would show up and say what he said, and I would pretty much agree.

We all hate each other because we disagree over the finer points, but we all hate prosers more, because they don't understand it is work. And if there is one point bflagsst and I totally agree on, it is that laziness has no place in poetry.


"Hate" perhaps is a strong word, chalk it up to Hyperbole. (#1,201 in is series of 10,000, tod.)

 

[twelveoone]

Palba, your turn...

 

[bflagsst]

Surely that isn't true or we would write our legal documents in poetic form rather than in complex Latin laden prose full of conexts, criterias and provisos etc etc.

Surely poetry, in many ways is like painting and music, it makes allusions, which is why a poem, a painting and a piece of music, can mean different things to different people depending on the experience of the reader/listener,viewer?

I would have thought the job of the poet/artist/musicians was to open up the imagination of the reader using signifiers to induce empathy.

You're mistaken in your concept of allusion and how it comes into play in prose vs. poetry. An allusion, like a metaphor, is language referencing an event, person, place, thing etc.


I think you might be yanking my chain a bit, Todski28. If all you got out of hope/soul/sings a tune is a bird singing, I'd have to ask you to define 'soul' first.


Desejo, do you read poetry out loud for the most part? I figured most read and enjoyed poems silently. I don't think a deaf person would miss out on structured/metered/patterned verse. I'm sure there is a significant element of poetry, the musicality(which is a whole other discussion) that a deaf person misses out on. I really don't know whether sound is critical in something being a good poem or not. But I think we're in agreement, that meaning should be more important than sound.

I know there's disagreement over what you need to study to write good poems, over what is and isn't even a poem, whether knowing forms helps or not when you're writing blank verse. But analyzing poems individually has always helped me learn and write better poetry.

 

[twelveoone]

Even when a poem appears to be utter nonsense, (unless, as I said, it's utter nonsense because the person who wrote it can't write).

I get that alot, laughs

 

[Angeline]

I get that alot, laughs

Yes well it's a necessary but evil byproduct of reading new poems every day, ain't it? What did you call it? A parade of stick figures fucking? That was my laugh of the day yesterday.

 

[twelveoone]

Yes well it's a necessary but evil byproduct of reading new poems every day, ain't it? What did you call it? A parade of stick figures fucking? That was my laugh of the day yesterday.

the parade of stick figures fucking
to the blaring tunes of cliche

Stop me, it's beginning to take poem shape, a little lacking in the coding part,
but I can't help but think somewhere out there would go

Really, where?
I'm sorry I missed it.
Why wasn't it announced?

And I would have to apologise for leaving the Tueday part out

 

[bronzeage]

No, I think you're misreading me and treating a reference expressing a single view of criticism as a knockdown counterpoint, which it isn't.

The primary mission of language in a poem is not encoding information. If it were, most examples of poetry would be examples of poor writing. Consider, what gets the most meaning across most efficiently and effectively, "Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?/Thou art more lovely and temperate" or "I hold the utmost regard for the virtues of your person, physical and otherwise"? Poetry arrives at meaning in a different way.

The entire point of prose, on the other hand, is encoding information. Prose is meant to tell you something concretely.

If poetry cannot be defined or limited by form and specification, then no on can declare the primary mission of a poem.

 

[bogusagain]

You're mistaken in your concept of allusion and how it comes into play in prose vs. poetry. An allusion, like a metaphor, is language referencing an event, person, place, thing etc.

No I am not mistaken in my use. Metaphor is not a precise way of communicating and that is my point, poetry is not very good at communicating concrete ideas nor information so it can be as laden with as much or as little information as someone arbitarily decides. Which is why I can think one poem is great and you can think the same poem is drivel and vice versa.