folio : (further) short takes on the prose poem
Prose Poetry: Literature’s Lunchbox
1.
The
great prose poet Louis Jenkins once wrote: The form of the prose poem is the
rectangle, one of our most useful geometric shapes. Think of the prose poem as
a box, perhaps the lunchbox (“A Few Words About the Prose Poem,” Nice
Fish: New and Selected Prose Poems, Holy Cow! Press, 1995).
2.
There
are no line breaks in a prose poem, no sudden detours, no sharp turns in a
labyrinthine maze, no speed bumps controlling the flow of traffic … which means
a prose poem can really pick up momentum as it rolls forward, and may end up
entire worlds away from where it began.
3.
According
to the Oxford Languages Dictionary, prose is defined as written or
spoken language in its ordinary form, without metrical structure and poetry
is defined as literary work in which special intensity is given to the
expression of feelings and ideas by the use of distinctive style and rhythm.
Put them together and what strange
hybrid this way comes?
Prose Poetry: ordinary language mixed
with special intensity.
4.
A
prose poem doesn’t compel the reader to read it a certain way. Standard poems
often suggest a particular word carries extra value by placing it at the end of
the line, allowing the reader's eye to linger on it a little longer. Likewise,
an extra meaningful line may stand apart from the others. Prose poetry doesn’t
manipulate the reading experience the same way. In a prose poem, all words have
the same value, each line is as meaningful as its neighbour.
5.
What
I appreciate most about prose poetry is that I can’t tell what it is by looking
at it. A “poetry-poem,” with its various lineations and enjambments,
automatically signifies itself from a distance; even before I begin reading the
piece, my mind prepares me for some kind of poetic experience. That doesn’t
happen with a prose poem. One has to engage with it in order to recognize what
it is. Like an actual lunchbox, the reader has to open it up and look inside to
see what happens next.
“I was raised…”
I was raised in the village of my mouth. A baby tooth surrounded by other baby teeth. I wobbled, grew loose. I died in that village, wondering. Who brushed me twice a day? Who ached when I was in pain?
“Many things…”
Many things were possessed by devils in olden days, but devils have less time now, so everything has to possess itself. Puddles possessed by raindrops. The colour green possessed by the ghosts of yellow and blue, the early morning sky possessed by the hope of things to come. Last night I possessed my room to go dark after I switched off the light. The whole world is haunted, my dead grandmother said, carrying a tray of stale biscuits through the woods. The wind hurried past, like a dog playing fetch with my breath. I lost track of time. A minute went by, and then three years, and then another minute. Pencil sharpeners were banned during the war for wasting valuable wood shavings, a possessed pencil stub whispered behind my ear.
