folio : short takes on the prose poem
What if we took the line breaks away from a poem, one full of all of its usual tricks, and condensed the text into a paragraph, would it be a prose poem? This poetic ‘form’ perplexes me. And more and more, I see definitions and boundaries as flux. Where do we set the margin on flux?
Does a definition come down to where a line needs to begin and end?
I don’t set out to write a prose poem.
The words will gather themselves if I gather myself together.
It’s true. I do think a text will shape itself. No need to sweet-talk or strong-arm a poem into a particular structure. It’s better to listen and let each poem become itself, from its first breath to last.
Spirit, espirit, spiritus.
Form is shaped by breathing. A blank space is a place to breathe. It’s part of a form. Or maybe form is created by breathlessness, or by held breath, or by breath taken away. Even marks of punctuation are hitches and catches for air.
A form is a feeling. For me, there is no reprieve with a line that wraps around. The textual density is suffocating. I feel anxious. There is no breathing until the break—
Sandra Ridley is the author of four books of poetry: Fallout, Post-Apothecary, The Counting House, and Silvija. This sequence here, “The Beasts of Simple Chace”, has been excerpted from a new manuscript, Vixen, forthcoming with Book*hug Press.
