folio : (further) short takes on the prose poem
Some Thoughts on the Prose Poem
For me, one of the reasons the prose poem is desirable as a poetic form is for how it pulls in, marshals, and releases energy. Without the organizing principle of the line break, prose poems allow images, rhythms, languages, ideas, and moods to build and move in a way that’s different from a typical delineated poem. At least, that’s how it seems to me. Though probably at least two-thirds of my poetic output these days are prose poetry, it wasn’t always this way: back in my teenage years, my early twenties, I broke lines with the best of them. But as my writing grew, as my preoccupations morphed, I found myself drawn more and more to the form. A tangible example: my first book of poetry, Arguments for Lawn Chairs, had exactly two prose poems. My second book was nearly three-quarters prose poem. There’s something about a nice block of text—full justified, of course—that is aesthetically and intellectually super compelling. When I’m high up in the scaffolding of a new prose poem—more space, more space for these scaffolds or I fall—I am drawn to repetition, to action, to images that come from I don’t know where. Over the years of my living in this form, I am still surprised by what is able to appear on the page.
Cataloguing the Known Universe
This planet is a soft planet. It has bones of moss, a core of freshwater silted with silver. This planet is a hard planet. Its rivers are iron, its sky shale and marble dust, its life cruel, relentless, without health care. This planet is a horned-up planet. It lusts for other masses, yearns for touch, for sympathy, for collision again and again and again. This planet is a mouthy planet. It’ll tell you what it really thinks, and what it really thinks ain’t pretty. This planet is a philosophical planet. It knows that in the pre-planet beginning there was void, and that in the post-planet end everything—planet, star, moon and breakfast nook—will be collected into a hard little pinch of matter. (This planet is unsure how it feels about containing such knowledge.) This planet is a vengeful planet. This planet is a giddy planet. This planet is a dirty planet. This planet is a diamond planet. This planet is a generally perturbed planet. This planet is an ungovernable planet. This planet, it is a soft planet.
Aaron Kreuter's most recent
poetry collection, Shifting Baseline Syndrome, was a finalist for the
2022 Governor General's Award, was shortlisted for the 2022 Raymond Souster
Award, and was included on CBC's Best Poetry Books of 2022 List. His other
books include the poetry collection Arguments for Lawn Chairs, the short
story collection You and Me, Belonging, and, from spring 2023, the
academic monograph Leaving Other People Alone: Diaspora, Zionism and
Palestine in Contemporary Jewish Fiction. Aaron's first novel, Lake
Burntshore, is forthcoming from ECW Press. He lives in Toronto.