[Tim Love]

Helena N mentioned the following to me, from the NT Times http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/09/books/review/09MCHENRY.html?ex=1106249558&ei=1&en=6e0aa61bb4 bec787
a review by Eric McHenry of some books containing some prose poems

As we complete our graduation from an aristocratic to a democratic society, Bly argued, the sentence will surely replace the line as poetry's primary unit. 'We are all secretly longing for prose.'

...

David Shumate's devotion to the prose poem is persuasive evidence of its movement in from the margins (or perhaps of poetry's movement out to the margins). For most of its history, the prose poem has been associated primarily with experimentalists. But Shumate is not a writer of radical ambition. 'High Water Mark: Prose Poems' reads like the work of a conversational free-verse poet who has decided that line breaks are a needless vestigial reflex. His funny, tender little allegories are how Carl Dennis or Billy Collins might write if the Return keys fell off their laptops

[Diana B]

Hi Tim

Unfortunately the link won't take us straight to the article. It seems one must register first in order to obtain full access to the site.

Di

[Tim Love]

I got straight in. I guess I registered years ago and forgot about it.

I like the thought of poets putting at least 1 prose poem into their first book to show that they do them. Along with a sonnet and a sestina of course.

[oliver murray]

I can't quite take to prose poems, although I think it a good thing that the excessive idolatory of the line-break should be challenged. Bly's ludicrous equation of free verse with democracy and now prose poems with even more democracy is laughable, though.

[Roger Slater]

It's quick, easy and free to register, and worth it to read the NY Times online.

[Katy Evans-Bush]

Hmm, I think I might be registered, come to think about it. Are we citizens of the world, or are we mice???

Anyway, this is an interesting conundrum. When I open a book and see a prose poem, I feel instantly bored. But when I've gone to the trouble of reading them I've usually been happy I did - considering you're reading the book because the poet is someone you want to read, why would you be prejudiced against this one thing they've written?

It's not that the line-break is the supreme notion, it's more like the musical phrase. But sentences can certainly be framed that way. (Some prose is very musical anyway. John Updike has a musical style. And RL Stevenson was one of the great stylists of his age - read a page of Treasure Island as if it were poetry - musically, it'll work. When he died, Henry James could hardly speak for grief.)

Also I was at a reading lately and Maurice Riordan read some things that I really liked - then when he'd finished, he said - by the way, those were all in prose!

KEB

[This message has been edited by Katy Evans-Bush (edited January 13, 2005).]

[winter]

You can read the article here at poetry-free-for-all .

I can't take to prose poems much either (the romac1 who replies to the pffa thread is me), but I have read some good ones.

The prose poems that are simply anecdotes with a sniff of "poetic" diction or Billy Collins-esque reality-shifts don't interest me much.
The ones that use sound and language in much the same way as a good poem does are worth looking at. And if a prose poem is funny and makes you laugh, i suppose that's no bad thing either.

[Henry Quince]

As far as I can see, the use of line breaks is counterproductive in the majority of free verse. (I speak as an occasional writer of free verse.) Instead of doing a useful job by underlining or assisting either the underlying rhetoric of the piece or its cadencing when spoken, or both, the breaks are chosen to cut across the flow of the language, or to achieve roughly equal line lengths on the page, or for surprise, or on some less-evident principle.

It seems to me that if FV line breaks are there mainly to subvert, rather than support, the rhetoric or the rhythm of the piece, they might be better removed. Not that anything must “always” be this or that (I don’t say a line break must NEVER cut across rhythm or rhetoric), but much FV is clearly not conceived in lines, so already the line is not the primary unit. I would rather read a piece of FV written out as a prose poem than the same piece with the spurious authority of random or disruptive line breaks. Of course, it may be that its credentials for being taken seriously consist entirely in that authority, and this will be evident when the prop is taken away.

[Robert J. Clawson]

Bad free verse has bad line breaks. Good free verse is difficult to write because the beauty of the line break is more difficult to achieve without the logic of its meter or a supporting rime scheme.

I enjoy Collins because he builds his wit on the turn. So much depends upon a good turn.

Bob

[Henry Quince]

Bad free verse has bad line breaks.

Well, ye-es. FV I consider bad usually has bad line breaks, but bad line breaks might not always be sufficient to make FV irredeemably bad. It might be dramatically improved by fixing the line breaks. Anyway, I think you will agree that the above says very little on its own. I thought I would at least give some rough indication of what I meant by bad line breaks.