folio : (further) short takes on the prose poem
short takes on the prose poem
1.
For me, poetry—whether with line breaks or
in compliance with margins—is always a kind of searching. Sometimes I search for
the end of the line. Sometimes I search by way of sentences. Always I search by
way of breath.
2.
I first read “Snow” by Ann Beattie in an
anthology of short fiction. This piece was filed under the chapter “Prose
Poetry.” In “Snow,” two people spend a winter in the country. They are in love.
Then they aren’t. The action of the prose poem is the aftermath, the heartache.
Beattie begins: “I remember…” Halfway through the piece, the reader feels a
break. Then another sentence: “You remember it differently.” When I finished
reading “Snow,” I had fallen in love with her heartache. I wondered how a piece
this short could take up so much time and fill with white. I could feel the
absent “you” and empathized with the speaker, the expanse between her memory
and his memory. The distance necessary to make that searching endless. I
admired, despite failure, her insistence to pull the lost lover back through
that unmentioned blizzard, which had already long passed.
3.
Everything is memory: everything is form. (Betsy Warland)
4.
When I was helping my son with
sentence-writing, I had to remind him to go back and include the period. “Un
point final,” I would rap on the page with my knuckle. “Don’t forget that
point final.” I said it enough times that it came out sounding strange. In
a prose poem, there are a rows and rows of point final against the white
page and yet they never quite add up to one. Or they add up to a dispersive many.
5.
This, of course, is the barest outline,
and futile to discuss. It’s as pointless as throwing birdseed on the ground
while snow still falls fast. (Ann Beattie)
6.
I wrote a winter prose poem of my own. My
speaker longs for the cardinal: “I am convinced, at times, that the cardinal is
all I have left.” It is summer now and I continue to search for the cardinal. I
follow its swooping sentences as it flings itself into the sun-covered treetops,
dense with leaves. I watch for as long as I can. Rarely do I know where it stops.
It could be here. Or there. Or there.
Pointe-à-Callière Museum
The blizzard blows winter around on the other side. We go downstairs, lower ourselves through stagnant strata of time. You, at four feet, sink beneath epochs. Below waits the remains of forts and cemeteries. We examine the broken knives, the shattered champagne bottles, the fractured writing slates. A pencil split right down its piece exposes lead that can still be used. A whistle shaped like a chicken hovers behind glass, cradles silence. Between crucifixes of crude metal, a woman’s crooked ring glimmers. A row of worn leather shoes in ascending size paces nowhere. We shadow the years, each century lit up on the floor, until we reach present day. By the time we make it, you, too, have grown older. You have travelled in circles and seen the death of things. The metro wind finds us. Somehow you still hold my hand on the platform, still seize me in other subterrain pockets.
Snow hammocked in your lashes. / Just wait.
Gillian Sze is the author of multiple poetry collections, including Peeling Rambutan, Redrafting Winter, and Panicle, which were all finalists for the Quebec Writers’ Federation’s A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry. Her latest book, Quiet Night Think, was shortlisted for the same prize in 2022 and received the 2023 Pat Lowther Memorial Award. Gillian has also written books for children. Her debut picture book, The Night Is Deep and Wide, was listed as one of the Best Books for Kids in 2021 by the New York Public Library. Her work has been translated into Slovenian, French, Italian, Turkish, Hebrew, Spanish, and Greek. Originally from Winnipeg, she now lives in Montreal where she teaches creative writing and literature at Concordia University.
