A MYRIAD OF FORM(S)

The Prose Poem

Monthly Prompt №7:October

A Definition

By definition, prose poetry appears as prose, reads as poetry, yet lacks line breaks associated with regular poetry, but still makes use of poetic devices such as fragmentation, compression, repetition, rhyme, metaphor, symbols and figures of speech common to poetry.

In the past six months, I’ve written more prose poetry than in the rest of my life. When writing prose poems, I find myself more apt to stretch lines further out, making them denser than usual, but still having a certain tendency to make crucial line breaks at the same spots I would if I were writing a free verse poem. It lets me know that there’s a very fine line between the two, but that prosetry (as I’ve sometimes seen it called) involves a definite act of delicate yet deliberate balance between prosaic elements and poetic devices. It would seem to be the perfect hybrid.

History

In 17th-century Japan, Matsuo Bashō originated haibun, a form of prose poetry combining haiku with prose. It is best exemplified by his book Oku no Hosomichi, in which he used a literary genre of prose-and-poetry composition of multidimensional writing.

In the West, prose poetry originated in early-19th-century France and Germany as a reaction against the traditional verse line. The German Romantics Jean Paul, Novalis, Friedrich Hölderlin, and Heinrich Heine may be seen as precursors of the prose poem. Earlier, 18th-century European forerunners of prose poetry had included James Macpherson’s “translation” of Ossian and Évariste de Parny’s “Chansons madécasses”.

At the time of the prose poem’s establishment as a form, French poetry was dominated by the alexandrine, a strict and demanding form that poets starting with Maurice de Guérin (whose “Le Centaure” and “La Bacchante” remain arguably the most powerful prose poems ever written) and Aloysius Bertrand (in Gaspard de la nuit) chose, in almost complete isolation, to cease using. Later Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, and Stéphane Mallarmé followed their example in works like Paris Spleen and Illuminations. The prose poem continued to be written in France into the 20th century by such writers as Max Jacob, Henri Michaux, Gertrude Stein, and Francis Ponge.

The writings of Syrian poet and writer Francis Marrash (1836–73) featured the first examples of prose poetry in modern Arabic literature. From the mid-20th century, the great Arab exponent of prose poetry was the Syrian poet Adunis (Ali Ahmad Said Esber, born 1930), a perennial contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

The Modernist poet T. S. Eliot wrote vehemently against prose poems. He added to the debate about what defines the genre, writing in his introduction to Djuna Barnes’ highly poeticized 1936 novel Nightwood that it could not be classed as “poetic prose” as it did not show the rhythm or “musical pattern” of verse. By contrast, other Modernist authors, including Gertrude Stein and Sherwood Anderson, consistently wrote prose poetry. Canadian author Elizabeth Smart’s By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept (1945) is a relatively isolated example of mid-20th-century English-language poetic prose.

Prose poems made a resurgence in the early 1950s and in the 1960s with American poets Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Russell Edson, Charles Simic, Robert Bly, John Ashbery, and James Wright. Edson worked principally in this form, and helped give the prose poem a reputation for surrealist wit. Simic won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his 1989 collection, The World Doesn’t End.

Since the late 1980s, prose poetry has gained in popularity. Journals have begun specializing in prose poems or microfiction. In the United Kingdom, Stride Books published a 1993 anthology of prose poetry, A Curious Architecture.

The Prompt

Write a prose poem. My only request is to either write about something you don’t usually right about or write about a favorite topic from a new perspective or using a different approach.

Please submit your drafts to The Bazaar of the Bizarre, link this post to your submission and also tag me. Please make sure to use “Forms Prompt” as your main tag, along with any other tags you may want to use.

Below are some examples of my own. I consider the first two to be my best prose poems. When writing these, the process I used to compose them was very different from my normal process with free verse. What I mean by this is they were more logically thought out rather than being spontaneous inventions of unconventional improvisation like most of my free verse. Though I consider the third one to also be prosetry, I’ll admit that it doubles as a rant that makes good use of fragmentation and repetition by splitting it into sections and echoing the idea of the title throughout the poem making it almost like a mantra.

Thanks to all the writers of The Bazaar of the Bizarre :) Write On! Rite On!! Right On!!!

Harley King Denise Baxter Yoder J.D. Harms Imad Samantha Lazar Frederick Andrew Naomi Leilani Acosta John Levin A.j Thomas Joanna Vang Daniel A. Teo Deepak Jayal Aaron Quist Gaston King Chloe Ann Marie Steele Amanda Dalmas Terry Barr Ivette Cruz Viraji Ogodapola Dr. Fatima Imam Joseph Lieungh Filza Chaudhry Andrea Juillerat-Olvera Jesse M. Gonzalez Barry Dawson IV Iva Hotko Lennie Varvarides Justin Haag Alina Sileanu Georgia Lewitt Warren Brown ScienceDuuude Roberto C. Salvador Marcus Enne Baker Mimi Bordeaux Vic Spandrio Somsubhra Banerjee Vixen Lea Lisa Bolin Marie A Bailey Sean F Corbin Brittany Alicia Carter Roxana Ștefan Rachel Ramkaran (she/her) Tracy Busby Anthony O’Dugan Elizabeth Barnesco Haikuster Chris Mooney-Singh TC Hails Stephanie Blossoms Pol Mitchell Francis David Kelli Sheckler-Amsden Rosa Diaz Melissa Coffey Anugraha Benjamin Mark Tulin Ryan Zaharako Anthony David Vernon Diana Rose Zamoras Mohan Boone j.calabrese Bob Metivier Sweet Pea G.R. MELVIN Eli Snow Dazzling Shene Penny Grubb Saugat Menon Sharing Randomly Lyle Deixler KSHernandez Venkataraman Mahalingam Ethereal Sonder Teresa Young Bhavyakirti

2021 Michael Hall is a creative, who is the creator and curator of The Bazaar of the Bizarre and a submissions editor for The POM, living in Illinois, but also soul traveling on the same astral plane as Lingua and the W.A.V.E. Kollectiv, because We Are the Voice(s) of Expression versus oppression and the powers that be…by any dreams necessary, and as Albert Camus said, “to create is to live twice.”