folio : short takes on the prose poem
On Prose for Poetry
There’s the Richard Howard aphorism that prose proceeds and verse reverses, which tells us nothing about poetry. Or, it tells us that the prose poem is not a hybrid form, per se, but rather that verse and prose are simply both choices available to the poem. They offer different resources, and they dial forward and back differently those other resources for meaning a poem leans on, like sound, rhythm, and narrative. Because the prose poem’s momentum is different from the lineated poem—its force is centripetal, not centrifugal—it does not spin the reader out to the world at the end of each line. This means it can hold the surreal, and the unexpected, in a slightly different way; we might be more willing to ride with it, to see what passes by its window, without evaluating it immediately. Instead of “ordinary” logic, or of its refusal, the poem can be supported simply by the fact of the words being placed next to each other in time. When the prose poem does pivot, it is through the language itself, not announced by the line break but accomplished sometimes without forewarning by syntax, punctuation, the parataxis of the hinge between each sentence, etc. This heightens the tension between such ordinary logics of language (which includes the logics of many poems) and lyric ones, because a poem which looks like ordinary or normative communication moves in other than ordinary ways. It is one way to play with pressure.
Still, a poem is not a movie, or a musical recording: if you leave the room, or if your attention wanders, it will not continue to play in the background. It meets the reader here, offering the choice of whether and how quickly to proceed.
Also, sometimes the line break feels violent, although a poem is not a person. Perhaps “extreme” is a better word. Division and parts-work are not inherently bad. But sometimes I am more interested in how two whole things sit next to each other than in how parts of the whole have been broken up or combined.
But mostly, what I love about the prose poem is how it refuses, at the outset, to tell you much about itself. Much has been made about how “form equals content” in poems, and there is a special pleasure in experiencing a thought made possible precisely because of a specific form. But for the prose poem this dictum is less instructive: you have before you a block of text, or a set of sentences, or a group of paragraphs, and this tells you rather less than a 14 line poem, or a series of six stanzas followed by a tercet, or a series of lines that are all roughly the same length. Often, the only way to learn about an individual prose poem’s rhythm or structure is to enter. This is a kind of intimacy. You build a relationship with the poem over time, the way you might build a relationship with a person. It is also a kind of lesson.
OK
Ok snow. Ok bridge. You’ve been doing too much for too long, without enough support. You have to step down, even if it causes problems, so you try hard to do it when the fewest people will be around. Ok evening, we were having a nice time, no wine, and now we’re not, now that evil flat world has brought you through the windows you thought you’d left behind and you can’t remember how the light bounces off each side of the prism. Ok textbook, I remember the illustration showing me how to separate the colors. I don’t want to talk about you behind your back, but the window’s frozen and it’s not that big of a deal anyway—the problem is that even a small deal can’t be repressed, or it becomes a big deal. Just wait, ok? In a minute, the good will outweigh the bad. In a minute, it won’t be like it never happened, it will be like it didn’t happen just now. But what will it be? Wait; just wait. I like it when you touch my face.
Pointilism, or The Horses of Myth
This is the story of how I learned to make an argument.
Most things we learn simply by doing.
Most doings we simply learn by encountering a thing.
The first argument was about a musical about pointillism.
Because a key signature is not didactic, I always had trouble with them and their parenthetical options, like (A minor) for C, (G sharp minor) for B.
Perhaps because of my Jewish heritage I cannot, for simplicity, disregard these minor options.
Perhaps it is my simplicity that means I cannot, for the sake of my Jewish heritage, disregard these sounds.
The second argument was about an arrangement of horses in a story by a woman who might have been a nun.
Like the parenthetical key signatures, these horses’ importance was not obvious, yet a maiden separates a knight from his horse and then returns that horse to him, saddled.
The maiden manipulates the horses as a way of manipulating the people, or the maiden manipulates the people in order to show off the parade of horses.
In the singing about pointillism, there are no horses.
In the story about horses, something like pointillism generates the conflict.
In the argument about my life, I have only ridden a horse once, and in the argument about my thinking, I refer frequently to pointillism to justify going around the point.
The Seurat painting sits at the top of the stairs of my mind, as if I spent many hours writing in front of it.
I sit at the top of the stairs in my house, as if I were in front of the painting, painting.
I was told to write about what I did not understand, that this was the road to knowledge.
Do not begin at the end, nor peer down the path to the gate from where you stand on the hill, in front of the canvas, in plein air.
Sit on the horse also carrying a wet blanket, as the fires burn on either side.
Once a fire burned around the painting, too heavy to move, and it was draped in wet blankets.
I am like the painting, or the horse.
The argument is that a key change can organize an experience.
The organization of the horses is that you can make an argument which is only felt.
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