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toniclark's review
5.0
"I imagine one is drawn to write prose poems not by sloth, which is better purely practiced in hammocks, but by an urge to participate in a different kind of psychic energy than verse usually embodies." -- William Matthews
I really love this book! I wanted to read it to educate myself about prose poetry. I'm forever wishing some prose poem had line breaks (never again!). The book comprises 33 short personal essays about prose poetry and the writing of it, how the author came to write in this form, etc., each essay being followed by two prose poems by that author. Very pleasing format. (Some of the essays contain a short prose poem or two, as well -- so there are nearly 80 in the book.) And what a smorgasbord of treats here! I couldn't read without stopping every few pages to jot things down, copy out favorite passages. It's a wonderful course in the prose poem.
Bob Hicok starts the collection with a wonderful piece called "Prose Poem Essay on the Prose Poem." I wish that was available online. A couple of brief excerpts: ". . . though most of all I adore how marginal the margin becomes: it just falls plumb, Bob, down the right side, taking out the lineated huffnpuff of breath, leaving the plainly more said." And later, "The prose poem's the Texas of poetry, you got miles and miles and miles, then suddenly it's New Mexico and over, this whooping and hollering, this rodeoing of prosing."
James Harms asks, "Is Simic really writing prose poetry, or is he simply removing the line breaks?" This strikes me as a silly question, though I realize it's rhetorical. What would make a piece really one as opposed to the other? I suppose the answer has something to do with whether the sentence, as opposed to the line (or phrase), is the primary unit of thought/expression. But I agree with Harms when he says that "It seems like hokum to believe that there's an inevitability to a particular poem and its particular form." Though, I should add that many writers do claim that there's one right form for each poem and some say that the poem knows what it's supposed to be.
Oh, I can't help myself. Must copy out this excerpt from Denise Duhamel's essay: "Prose poetry and flash fiction are kissing cousins. They are kissing on Jerry Springer, knowing they're cousins and screaming "So what?" as the audience hisses. They are kissing on One LIfe to Live, unaware that one's aunt is the other's mother. A prose poem suffers from amnesia, and when her friends tell her about her past, nothing they describe produces in her even a flicker. In a flash, she thinks they are wrong--something tells me I was once a short short. Flash fiction looks into the mirror and sees a prose poem. A prose poem parts his hair on the left instead of the middle, and his brother tells him he's flash fiction. A prose poem walks into a bar, and the bartender says, "What'll you have? The usual paragraph?" A flash fiction walks into the doctor's office and the doctor says, "How's that stanza feeling?" There may be a difference between flash fiction and prose poems, but I believe the researchers still haven't found the genes that differentiate them."
Duhamel also quotes Peter Johnson: "Just as black humor straddles the fine line between comedy and tragedy, so prose poetry plants one foot in prose, the other in poetry, both heels resting precariously on banana peels."
I much enjoyed Jeffrey Skinner's essay (he's a great admirer of Fernando Pessoa). At one point, after talking about the poems he wrote about his father: "I know people who would say I was working something out in these poems. But when you come down to it, in the contest between psychology and poetry, the former is absurdly overmatched." This caught my attention because I've always thought this, have always been a bit impatient with people who try to tack psychological explanations onto poems or insist that the writer is reiterating his analysis or whatever. Poetry is much more complex and subtle. And it is not therapy. Although poetry may be the theatre of emotion. Skinner says it can be a comic operetta or a theatre for grief.
Here's one of Skinner's own prose poems: "Many Worlds"
Robert Miltner says: "Prose poetry is a double helix. Since a prose poem is simultaneously both prose and poetry, the problem is a double problem, requiring a double solution. Twice as difficult, the risk; twice as satisfying, the solution. Imagine train tracks merging in the distance. Imagine paired skaters. Imagine lovers. Imagine yourself in the mirror."
Miltner also says: "Prose walks but poetry dances. Which is why a prose poem moves so funny on the page."
Here's one of the prose poems by Robert Miltner:
You Know What They Say About Pears
Frumpy, heavy-hipped, green with envy of apples, the pears wear babushkas and pull carts filled with celery and cabbage out past West 88th and Detroit. Grainy sweet like candy eaten at the beach, freckled in and out of the sun, a pear is the younger child all brothers and sisters watch out for but never want to play with. The sad pears--Bartlett and Bosc, Seckel and d'Anjou--cry themselves to sleep. They see themselves as teardrops, tongueless bells unable to celebrate, or quotation marks with nothing to say. In their dreams, they run away to Hollywood and become avocados.
I could post many more excerpts and good quotes, but I'll close with this one. "A good thing to do when you're inside a prose poem is to look around, If you can do that, you'll be okay." -- Mary Ann Samyn
I really love this book! I wanted to read it to educate myself about prose poetry. I'm forever wishing some prose poem had line breaks (never again!). The book comprises 33 short personal essays about prose poetry and the writing of it, how the author came to write in this form, etc., each essay being followed by two prose poems by that author. Very pleasing format. (Some of the essays contain a short prose poem or two, as well -- so there are nearly 80 in the book.) And what a smorgasbord of treats here! I couldn't read without stopping every few pages to jot things down, copy out favorite passages. It's a wonderful course in the prose poem.
Bob Hicok starts the collection with a wonderful piece called "Prose Poem Essay on the Prose Poem." I wish that was available online. A couple of brief excerpts: ". . . though most of all I adore how marginal the margin becomes: it just falls plumb, Bob, down the right side, taking out the lineated huffnpuff of breath, leaving the plainly more said." And later, "The prose poem's the Texas of poetry, you got miles and miles and miles, then suddenly it's New Mexico and over, this whooping and hollering, this rodeoing of prosing."
James Harms asks, "Is Simic really writing prose poetry, or is he simply removing the line breaks?" This strikes me as a silly question, though I realize it's rhetorical. What would make a piece really one as opposed to the other? I suppose the answer has something to do with whether the sentence, as opposed to the line (or phrase), is the primary unit of thought/expression. But I agree with Harms when he says that "It seems like hokum to believe that there's an inevitability to a particular poem and its particular form." Though, I should add that many writers do claim that there's one right form for each poem and some say that the poem knows what it's supposed to be.
Oh, I can't help myself. Must copy out this excerpt from Denise Duhamel's essay: "Prose poetry and flash fiction are kissing cousins. They are kissing on Jerry Springer, knowing they're cousins and screaming "So what?" as the audience hisses. They are kissing on One LIfe to Live, unaware that one's aunt is the other's mother. A prose poem suffers from amnesia, and when her friends tell her about her past, nothing they describe produces in her even a flicker. In a flash, she thinks they are wrong--something tells me I was once a short short. Flash fiction looks into the mirror and sees a prose poem. A prose poem parts his hair on the left instead of the middle, and his brother tells him he's flash fiction. A prose poem walks into a bar, and the bartender says, "What'll you have? The usual paragraph?" A flash fiction walks into the doctor's office and the doctor says, "How's that stanza feeling?" There may be a difference between flash fiction and prose poems, but I believe the researchers still haven't found the genes that differentiate them."
Duhamel also quotes Peter Johnson: "Just as black humor straddles the fine line between comedy and tragedy, so prose poetry plants one foot in prose, the other in poetry, both heels resting precariously on banana peels."
I much enjoyed Jeffrey Skinner's essay (he's a great admirer of Fernando Pessoa). At one point, after talking about the poems he wrote about his father: "I know people who would say I was working something out in these poems. But when you come down to it, in the contest between psychology and poetry, the former is absurdly overmatched." This caught my attention because I've always thought this, have always been a bit impatient with people who try to tack psychological explanations onto poems or insist that the writer is reiterating his analysis or whatever. Poetry is much more complex and subtle. And it is not therapy. Although poetry may be the theatre of emotion. Skinner says it can be a comic operetta or a theatre for grief.
Here's one of Skinner's own prose poems: "Many Worlds"
Robert Miltner says: "Prose poetry is a double helix. Since a prose poem is simultaneously both prose and poetry, the problem is a double problem, requiring a double solution. Twice as difficult, the risk; twice as satisfying, the solution. Imagine train tracks merging in the distance. Imagine paired skaters. Imagine lovers. Imagine yourself in the mirror."
Miltner also says: "Prose walks but poetry dances. Which is why a prose poem moves so funny on the page."
Here's one of the prose poems by Robert Miltner:
You Know What They Say About Pears
Frumpy, heavy-hipped, green with envy of apples, the pears wear babushkas and pull carts filled with celery and cabbage out past West 88th and Detroit. Grainy sweet like candy eaten at the beach, freckled in and out of the sun, a pear is the younger child all brothers and sisters watch out for but never want to play with. The sad pears--Bartlett and Bosc, Seckel and d'Anjou--cry themselves to sleep. They see themselves as teardrops, tongueless bells unable to celebrate, or quotation marks with nothing to say. In their dreams, they run away to Hollywood and become avocados.
I could post many more excerpts and good quotes, but I'll close with this one. "A good thing to do when you're inside a prose poem is to look around, If you can do that, you'll be okay." -- Mary Ann Samyn
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