Aaron Kreuter : (further) short takes on the prose poem

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.

Janice Lee, Dan Rosenberg, Randy Lundy, Aaron Kreuter + Alison Calder : virtual reading series #29

a series of video recordings of contemporary poets reading from their work, originally prompted by the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent cancellations, shut-downs and isolations; a reading series you can enjoy in the safety of your own protected space,

Janice Lee : 3 untitled poems from Separation Anxiety (forthcoming August 2022, CLASH Books)

Janice Lee is a Korean-American writer, teacher, spiritual scholar, and shamanic healer. She is the author of 7 books of fiction, creative nonfiction & poetry, most recently Imagine a Death (Texas Review Press, 2021) and Separation Anxiety (CLASH Books, 2022). A roundtable, unanimous dreamers chime in, a collaborative novel co-authored with Brenda Iijima, is also forthcoming in 2022 from Meekling Press. An essay (co-authored with Jared Woodland) is featured in the recently released 4K restoration of Sátántangó (dir. Béla Tarr) from Arbelos Films. She writes about interspecies communication, plants & personhood, the filmic long take, slowness, the apocalypse, architectural spaces, inherited trauma, and the Korean concept of han, and asks the question, how do we hold space open while maintaining intimacy? Incorporating shamanic and energetic healing, she teaches workshops on inherited trauma, healing and writing, and practices in several lineages, including the medicine tradition of the Q’ero, Zen Buddhism (in the tradition of Plum Village and Thich Nhat Hanh), plant & animal medicine, and Korean shamanic ritual (Muism). She currently lives in Portland, OR where she is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Portland State University.

Dan Rosenberg : “Cause and Effect,” “Is It Astronomy or Astrology” and “The Stapler”

Dan Rosenberg’s most recent book, Bassinet, was published by Carnegie Mellon University Press in 2022. His work has won the American Poetry Journal Book Prize and the Omnidawn Poetry Chapbook Contest, and recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the Kenyon Review, Conduit, and Poem-a-Day from the Academy of American Poets. Rosenberg teaches literature, creative writing, and translation theory at Wells College in Aurora, NY. Find him at DanRosenberg.us

Randy Lundy : “Thinking of Nothing,” Field Notes for the Self (2020)

Randy Lundy is an Irish, Norwegian, and Cree member of the Barren Lands First Nation in northern Manitoba. He is the author of four award-winning books of poetry, most recently Field Notes for the Self (2020) and Blackbird Song (2018), both from the University of Regina Press. He currently teaches in the English Department at the University of Toronto, Scarborough and is Series Editor of the Oskana Poetry & Poetics series at University of Regina Press.

Aaron Kreuter : “Shifting Baseline Syndrome,” “Catasrophists Anonymous,” and “Bonetown”

Aaron Kreuter is the author of the short story collection You and Me, Belonging (2018) and the poetry collection Arguments for Lawn Chairs (2016). His writing has appeared in places such as Grain Magazine, The Puritan, The Temz Review, and The Rusty Toque. Kreuter lives in Toronto and is a postdoctoral fellow at Carleton University. Shifting Baseline Syndrome is his second book of poems.

Alison Calder : “At 50,” “In the ‘70s” and “The Future”

Alison Calder grew up in Saskatoon. Her poetry has won two Manitoba Book Awards and been a finalist for both the Gerald Lampert Award and the Pat Lowther Award. Synaptic is her third collection. She now lives in Winnipeg, where she teaches Canadian literature and creative writing at the University of Manitoba.