Prose poetry
Encyclopedia
Prose poetry is poetry
written in prose
instead of using verse
but preserving poetic qualities such as heightened imagery and emotional effects.
or prose
, or a separate genre altogether. The argument for prose poetry belonging to the genre
of poetry emphasizes its heightened attention to language
and prominent use of metaphor
. On the other hand, prose poetry can be identified primarily as prose
for its reliance on prose's association with narrative
and on the expectation of an objective presentation of truth
.
Critics such as Jonathan Monroe and Margueritte S. Murphy argue instead that the prose poem gains its subversiveness through its fusion of poetic and prosaic elements and, consequently, its challenge to the traditional notions of genre theory.
as a reaction against dependence upon traditional uses of line in verse
. At the time of the prose poem's emergence, French
poetry was dominated by the Alexandrine
, an extremely strict and demanding form that poets starting with Aloysius Bertrand
and later Charles Baudelaire
, Arthur Rimbaud
and Stéphane Mallarmé
rebelled against in works such as Gaspard de la Nuit
, Paris Spleen
and Les Illuminations.
The prose poem continued to be written in France into the 20th century by such writers as Max Jacob
, Henri Michaux
, and Francis Ponge
.
At the end of the 19th century, British Decadent movement
poets such as Oscar Wilde
picked up the form because of its already subversive association. This may have hindered the dissemination of the form into English because many associated the Decadents with homosexuality; hence any form used by the Decadents was suspect.
Other writers of prose poems outside of France include Friedrich Hölderlin
, Novalis
, Rainer Maria Rilke
, and Edgar Allan Poe
.
Notable Modernist poet T. S. Eliot
wrote vehemently against prose poems, though he did try his hand at one or two. He also added to the debate about what defines the genre, saying in his introduction to Djuna Barnes
' highly poeticized 1936 novel Nightwood
that this work may not be classed as "poetic prose" as it did not have the rhythm or "musical pattern" of verse.
In contrast, a couple of other Modernist authors wrote prose poetry consistently, including Gertrude Stein
and Sherwood Anderson
. In actuality, Anderson considered his work to be short fictions—in the current term, "flash fiction
". The distinction between flash fiction and prose poetry is at times very thin, almost indiscernible.
By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept
by Canadian
author Elizabeth Smart
, written in 1945, is a relatively isolated example of English-language poetic prose in the mid-20th century.
Then, for a while, prose poems died out, at least in English—until the early 1950s and '60s, when American poets such as Allen Ginsberg
, Bob Dylan
, Jack Kerouac
, William S. Burroughs
, Russell Edson
, Charles Simic
, Robert Bly
and James Wright
experimented with the form. Edson, indeed, worked principally in this form, and helped give the prose poem its current reputation for surrealist wit. Similarly, Simic won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for his 1989 collection, The World Doesn't End.
At the same time, poets elsewhere were exploring the form in Spanish, Japanese and Russian. Octavio Paz
worked in this form in Spanish in his Aguila o Sol? (Eagle or Sun?). Spanish poet Ángel Crespo
(1926–95) did his most notable work in the genre. Giannina Braschi
, postmodern Spanish-language poet, wrote a trilogy of prose poems, El imperio de los suenos (Empire of Dreams, 1988). Translator Dennis Keene
presents the work of six Japanese prose poets in The Modern Japanese Prose Poem: an Anthology of Six Poets. Similarly, Adrian Wanner and Caryl Emerson describe the form's growth in Russia in their critical work, Russian Minimalism: from the Prose Poem to the Anti-story. The two best-known examples of this literary form in Russian are Gogol's Dead Souls and Venedikt Erofeev
's Moscow-Petushki.
In Poland
, Bolesław Prus (1847–1912), influenced by the French prose poets, had written a number of poetic
micro-stories, including "Mold of the Earth
" (1884), "The Living Telegraph" (1884) and "Shades
" (1885). His somewhat longer story, "A Legend of Old Egypt" (1888), likewise shows many features of prose poetry.
The form has gained popularity since the late 1980s, and literary journals that previously disputed prose poetry's contributions to both poetry and prose currently display prose poems next to sonnets and short stories. Journals have even begun to specialize, publishing solely prose poems/flash fiction in their pages (see external links below). Some contemporary writers who write prose poems or flash fiction include Michael Benedikt, Robert Bly, J. Karl Bogartte, Anne Carson
, Graham Burchell, Kim Chinquee, Stephen Dunn
, Russell Edson
, Richard Garcia, Ray Gonzalez, Kimiko Hahn
, Lyn Hejinian
, Mark Jarman
, Louis Jenkins
, Campbell McGrath
, Sheila Murphy
, Naomi Shihab Nye
, Mary Oliver
, John Olson
, Marge Piercy
, Bruce Holland Rogers
, David Shumate, James Tate
, and J. Marcus Weekley, Ron Silliman
, Robin Spriggs
, Thomas Wiloch
, and Gary Young
.
Rapturous, rhythmic, image-laden prose from previous centuries, such as that found in Jeremy Taylor
and Thomas de Quincey
, strikes 21st-century readers as having something of a poetic quality. Using figurative language to provoke thought, it invites a reader into unusual perspectives to question what is traditionally thought of, as in Richard Garcia's "Chickenhead."
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
written in prose
Prose
Prose is the most typical form of written language, applying ordinary grammatical structure and natural flow of speech rather than rhythmic structure...
instead of using verse
Verse (poetry)
A verse is formally a single line in a metrical composition, e.g. poetry. However, the word has come to represent any division or grouping of words in such a composition, which traditionally had been referred to as a stanza....
but preserving poetic qualities such as heightened imagery and emotional effects.
Characteristics
Prose poetry can be considered either primarily poetryPoetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
or prose
Prose
Prose is the most typical form of written language, applying ordinary grammatical structure and natural flow of speech rather than rhythmic structure...
, or a separate genre altogether. The argument for prose poetry belonging to the genre
Genre
Genre , Greek: genos, γένος) is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or culture, e.g. music, and in general, any type of discourse, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time...
of poetry emphasizes its heightened attention to language
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
and prominent use of metaphor
Metaphorical language
Metaphorical language is the use of a complex system of metaphors to create a sub-language within a common language which provides the basic terms to express metaphors....
. On the other hand, prose poetry can be identified primarily as prose
Prose
Prose is the most typical form of written language, applying ordinary grammatical structure and natural flow of speech rather than rhythmic structure...
for its reliance on prose's association with narrative
Narrative
A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"...
and on the expectation of an objective presentation of truth
Truth
Truth has a variety of meanings, such as the state of being in accord with fact or reality. It can also mean having fidelity to an original or to a standard or ideal. In a common usage, it also means constancy or sincerity in action or character...
.
Critics such as Jonathan Monroe and Margueritte S. Murphy argue instead that the prose poem gains its subversiveness through its fusion of poetic and prosaic elements and, consequently, its challenge to the traditional notions of genre theory.
History
As a specific form, the origins of prose poetry in the West are placed around 19th-century FranceFrance
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
as a reaction against dependence upon traditional uses of line in verse
Line (poetry)
A line is a unit of language into which a poem or play is divided, which operates on principles which are distinct from and not necessarily coincident with grammatical structures, such as the sentence or clauses in sentences...
. At the time of the prose poem's emergence, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
poetry was dominated by the Alexandrine
Alexandrine
An alexandrine is a line of poetic meter comprising 12 syllables. Alexandrines are common in the German literature of the Baroque period and in French poetry of the early modern and modern periods. Drama in English often used alexandrines before Marlowe and Shakespeare, by whom it was supplanted...
, an extremely strict and demanding form that poets starting with Aloysius Bertrand
Aloysius Bertrand
Louis-Jacques-Napoléon “Aloysius” Bertrand was a French poet instrumental in the introduction of the prose poem into French literature and is credited with inspiring later Symbolist poets...
and later Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
, Arthur Rimbaud
Arthur Rimbaud
Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud was a French poet. Born in Charleville, Ardennes, he produced his best known works while still in his late teens—Victor Hugo described him at the time as "an infant Shakespeare"—and he gave up creative writing altogether before the age of 21. As part of the decadent...
and Stéphane Mallarmé
Stéphane Mallarmé
Stéphane Mallarmé , whose real name was Étienne Mallarmé, was a French poet and critic. He was a major French symbolist poet, and his work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools of the early 20th century, such as Dadaism, Surrealism, and Futurism.-Biography:Stéphane...
rebelled against in works such as Gaspard de la Nuit
Gaspard de la nuit
Gaspard de la nuit: Trois poèmes pour piano d'après Aloysius Bertrand is a piece for solo piano by Maurice Ravel, written in 1908. It has three movements, each based on a poem by Aloysius Bertrand...
, Paris Spleen
Le Spleen de Paris
Le Spleen de Paris, also known as Paris Spleen or Petits Poèmes en prose, is a collection of 51 short prose poems by Charles Baudelaire....
and Les Illuminations.
The prose poem continued to be written in France into the 20th century by such writers as Max Jacob
Max Jacob
Max Jacob was a French poet, painter, writer, and critic.-Life and career:After spending his childhood in Quimper, Brittany, France, he enrolled in the Paris Colonial School, which he left in 1897 for an artistic career...
, Henri Michaux
Henri Michaux
Henri Michaux was a highly idiosyncratic Belgian-born poet, writer, and painter who wrote in French. He later took French citizenship. Michaux is best known for his esoteric books written in a highly accessible style, and his body of work includes poetry, travelogues, and art criticism...
, and Francis Ponge
Francis Ponge
Francis Jean Gaston Alfred Ponge was a French essayist and poet. In many ways, he combined the two — essay and poem — into a single art form.-Life:...
.
At the end of the 19th century, British Decadent movement
Decadent movement
The Decadent movement was a late 19th century artistic and literary movement of Western Europe. It flourished in France, but also had devotees in England and throughout Europe, as well as in the United States.-Overview:...
poets such as Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
picked up the form because of its already subversive association. This may have hindered the dissemination of the form into English because many associated the Decadents with homosexuality; hence any form used by the Decadents was suspect.
Other writers of prose poems outside of France include Friedrich Hölderlin
Friedrich Hölderlin
Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin was a major German lyric poet, commonly associated with the artistic movement known as Romanticism. Hölderlin was also an important thinker in the development of German Idealism, particularly his early association with and philosophical influence on his...
, Novalis
Novalis
Novalis was the pseudonym of Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg , an author and philosopher of early German Romanticism.-Biography:...
, Rainer Maria Rilke
Rainer Maria Rilke
René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke , better known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was a Bohemian–Austrian poet. He is considered one of the most significant poets in the German language...
, and Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
.
Notable Modernist poet T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
wrote vehemently against prose poems, though he did try his hand at one or two. He also added to the debate about what defines the genre, saying in his introduction to Djuna Barnes
Djuna Barnes
Djuna Barnes was an American writer who played an important part in the development of 20th century English language modernist writing and was one of the key figures in 1920s and '30s bohemian Paris after filling a similar role in the Greenwich Village of the teens...
' highly poeticized 1936 novel Nightwood
Nightwood
Nightwood is a 1936 novel by Djuna Barnes first published in London by Faber and Faber. An edition published in the United States in 1937 by Harcourt, Brace included an introduction by T. S. Eliot.....
that this work may not be classed as "poetic prose" as it did not have the rhythm or "musical pattern" of verse.
In contrast, a couple of other Modernist authors wrote prose poetry consistently, including Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.-Early life:...
and Sherwood Anderson
Sherwood Anderson
Sherwood Anderson was an American novelist and short story writer. His most enduring work is the short story sequence Winesburg, Ohio. Writers he has influenced include Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, J. D. Salinger, and Amos Oz.-Early life:Anderson was born in Clyde, Ohio,...
. In actuality, Anderson considered his work to be short fictions—in the current term, "flash fiction
Flash fiction
Flash fiction is a style of fictional literature or fiction of extreme brevity. There is no widely accepted definition of the length of the category...
". The distinction between flash fiction and prose poetry is at times very thin, almost indiscernible.
By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept
By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept
By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept is a novel of prose poetry written by the Canadian author Elizabeth Smart and published in 1945. It is widely considered to be a classic of the genre....
by Canadian
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
author Elizabeth Smart
Elizabeth Smart (author)
Elizabeth Smart was a Canadian poet and novelist. Her book, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, detailed her romance with the poet George Barker...
, written in 1945, is a relatively isolated example of English-language poetic prose in the mid-20th century.
Then, for a while, prose poems died out, at least in English—until the early 1950s and '60s, when American poets such as Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...
, Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
, Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac
Jean-Louis "Jack" Lebris de Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing, covering topics such as Catholic...
, William S. Burroughs
William S. Burroughs
William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...
, Russell Edson
Russell Edson
Russell Edson is an American poet, novelist, writer and illustrator, and the son of the cartoonist-screenwriter Gus Edson....
, Charles Simic
Charles Simic
Dušan "Charles" Simić is a Serbian-American poet, and was co-Poetry Editor of the Paris Review. He was appointed the fifteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 2007.-Early years:...
, Robert Bly
Robert Bly
Robert Bly is an American poet, author, activist and leader of the Mythopoetic Men's Movement.-Life:Bly was born in Lac qui Parle County, Minnesota, to Jacob and Alice Bly, who were of Norwegian ancestry. Following graduation from high school in 1944, he enlisted in the United States Navy, serving...
and James Wright
James Wright (poet)
James Arlington Wright was an American poet.Wright first emerged on the literary scene in 1956 with The Green Wall, a collection of formalist verse that was awarded the prestigious Yale Younger Poets Prize. But by the early 1960s, Wright, increasingly influenced by the Spanish language...
experimented with the form. Edson, indeed, worked principally in this form, and helped give the prose poem its current reputation for surrealist wit. Similarly, Simic won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for his 1989 collection, The World Doesn't End.
At the same time, poets elsewhere were exploring the form in Spanish, Japanese and Russian. Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz Lozano was a Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, and the winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature.-Early life and writings:...
worked in this form in Spanish in his Aguila o Sol? (Eagle or Sun?). Spanish poet Ángel Crespo
Ángel Crespo
Ángel Crespo was born in 1926 in Alcolea de Calatrava, Province of Ciudad Real and died in 1995 in Barcelona. He was one of Spain's most significant poets and translators of the second half of the twentieth century....
(1926–95) did his most notable work in the genre. Giannina Braschi
Giannina Braschi
Giannina Braschi is a Puerto Rican writer. She is credited with writing the first Spanglish novel YO-YO BOING! and the poetry trilogy Empire of Dreams , which chronicles the Latin American immigrant's experiences in the United States...
, postmodern Spanish-language poet, wrote a trilogy of prose poems, El imperio de los suenos (Empire of Dreams, 1988). Translator Dennis Keene
Dennis Keene
Dennis Keene is a Democratic Party member of the Kentucky House of Representatives, representing District 67 since 2004. His district is entirely based in Campbell County, Kentucky, comprising the cities of Dayton, Bellevue, Newport, Wilder, Southdate, Woodlawn, and a portion of Highland Heights.He...
presents the work of six Japanese prose poets in The Modern Japanese Prose Poem: an Anthology of Six Poets. Similarly, Adrian Wanner and Caryl Emerson describe the form's growth in Russia in their critical work, Russian Minimalism: from the Prose Poem to the Anti-story. The two best-known examples of this literary form in Russian are Gogol's Dead Souls and Venedikt Erofeev
Venedikt Erofeev
Venedict Vasilyevich Yerofeyev or Erofeev or Erofeyev was a Russian writer.-Biography:Yerofeyev was born in the small settlement Niva-2, a suburb of Kandalaksha, Murmansk Oblast. His father was imprisoned during Stalin's purges but survived 16 years in the gulags. Most of Yerofeyev's childhood...
's Moscow-Petushki.
In Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, Bolesław Prus (1847–1912), influenced by the French prose poets, had written a number of poetic
Poetic
Poetic may refer to:* Poetry, or a relation thereof.* Too Poetic, a deceased rapper and hip hop producer....
micro-stories, including "Mold of the Earth
Mold of the Earth
"Mold of the Earth" is one of the shortest micro-stories by the Polish writer Bolesław Prus.The story was published on 1 January 1884 in the News Year's Day issue of the Warsaw Courier . The story comes from a several years' period of pessimism in the author's life...
" (1884), "The Living Telegraph" (1884) and "Shades
Shades (story)
"Shades" is one of Bolesław Prus' shortest micro-stories. Written in 1885, it comes from a several years' period of pessimism in the author's life caused partly by the 1883 failure of Nowiny , a Warsaw daily that he had been editing less than a year...
" (1885). His somewhat longer story, "A Legend of Old Egypt" (1888), likewise shows many features of prose poetry.
The form has gained popularity since the late 1980s, and literary journals that previously disputed prose poetry's contributions to both poetry and prose currently display prose poems next to sonnets and short stories. Journals have even begun to specialize, publishing solely prose poems/flash fiction in their pages (see external links below). Some contemporary writers who write prose poems or flash fiction include Michael Benedikt, Robert Bly, J. Karl Bogartte, Anne Carson
Anne Carson
Anne Carson is a Canadian poet, essayist, translator and professor of Classics. Carson lived in Montreal for several years and taught at McGill University, the University of Michigan, and at Princeton University from 1980-1987....
, Graham Burchell, Kim Chinquee, Stephen Dunn
Stephen Dunn
Stephen Dunn is an American poet. Dunn has written fifteen collections of poetry. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his 2001 collection, Different Hours and has received an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Dunn completed his B.A. in English at...
, Russell Edson
Russell Edson
Russell Edson is an American poet, novelist, writer and illustrator, and the son of the cartoonist-screenwriter Gus Edson....
, Richard Garcia, Ray Gonzalez, Kimiko Hahn
Kimiko Hahn
Kimiko Hahn is an American poet and instructor of poetry.-Personal:Hahn received a bachelor's degree from the University of Iowa and an M.A...
, Lyn Hejinian
Lyn Hejinian
Lyn Hejinian is an American poet, essayist, translator and publisher. She is often associated with the Language poets and is well known for her landmark work My Life , as well as her book of essays, The Language of Inquiry .-Life:Hejinian was born in the San...
, Mark Jarman
Mark Jarman
Mark F. Jarman is an American poet and critic often identified with the New Narrative branch of the New Formalism; he was co-editor with Robert McDowell of The Reaper throughout the 1980s...
, Louis Jenkins
Louis Jenkins
Louis Jenkins is a prose poet from Enid, Oklahoma. He has lived in Duluth, Minnesota, for over 30 years with his wife Ann. His poems have been published in a number of literary magazines and anthologies. Jenkins has been a guest on A Prairie Home Companion numerous times and has also been featured...
, Campbell McGrath
Campbell McGrath
Campbell McGrath is a notable modern American poet. He is the author of nine full-length collections of poetry, including his most recent, Seven Notebooks , Shannon: A Poem of the Lewis and Clark Expedition , and In the Kingdom of the Sea Monkeys .- Life :McGrath was born in Chicago, Illinois, and...
, Sheila Murphy
Sheila Murphy
Sheila E. Murphy is an American text and visual poet who has been writing and publishing actively since 1978. She currently lives in Phoenix, Arizona.She earned:...
, Naomi Shihab Nye
Naomi Shihab Nye
Naomi Shihab Nye is a poet, songwriter, and novelist. She was born to a Palestinian father and American mother. Although she regards herself as a "wandering poet", she refers to San Antonio as her home.-Career:...
, Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver is an American poet who has won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. The New York Times described her as "far and away, this country's [America's] best-selling poet".-Early life:...
, John Olson
John Olson (poet and writer)
John Olson is an American poet and novelist. Born August 23, 1947 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Olson has lived for many years in Seattle, Washington. He has published eight collections of poetry and two novels, including Souls of Wind, nominated for the 2008 Believer Book Award...
, Marge Piercy
Marge Piercy
Marge Piercy is an American poet, novelist, and social activist. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller Gone to Soldiers, a sweeping historical novel set during World War II.-Biography:...
, Bruce Holland Rogers
Bruce Holland Rogers
Bruce Holland Rogers is an American author of short fiction who also writes under the pseudonym Hanovi Braddock. His stories have won a Pushcart Prize, two Nebula Awards, the Bram Stoker Award, two World Fantasy Awards, the Micro Award, and have been nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award and...
, David Shumate, James Tate
James Tate (writer)
James Tate is an American poet whose work has earned him the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. He is a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters...
, and J. Marcus Weekley, Ron Silliman
Ron Silliman
Ron Silliman is an American poet. He has written and edited over 30 books, and has had his poetry and criticism translated into 12 languages. He is often associated with language poetry. Between 1979 and 2004, Silliman wrote a single poem, The Alphabet...
, Robin Spriggs
Robin Spriggs
Robin Spriggs is an American writer, actor, and poet. Known primarily as a dark fabulist, he is the author of the critically acclaimed Diary of a Gentleman Diabolist and Wondrous Strange: Tales of the Uncanny; the co-author of The Dracula Poems: A Poetic Encounter with the Lord of Vampires; and...
, Thomas Wiloch
Thomas Wiloch
Thomas Wiloch was an American author, editor, poet, and illustrator.Born in Detroit, Michigan, Wiloch was "one of a handful of contemporary American masters of the prose miniature," Greg Boyd wrote in Asylum....
, and Gary Young
Gary Young (poet)
Gary Eugene Young is an American poet, printer and book artist. In 2010 he was named Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz county.-Life:He graduated from University of California Santa Cruz and University of California, Irvine, with an M.F.A....
.
Rapturous, rhythmic, image-laden prose from previous centuries, such as that found in Jeremy Taylor
Jeremy Taylor
Jeremy Taylor was a clergyman in the Church of England who achieved fame as an author during the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell. He is sometimes known as the "Shakespeare of Divines" for his poetic style of expression and was often presented as a model of prose writing...
and Thomas de Quincey
Thomas de Quincey
Thomas Penson de Quincey was an English esssayist, best known for his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater .-Child and student:...
, strikes 21st-century readers as having something of a poetic quality. Using figurative language to provoke thought, it invites a reader into unusual perspectives to question what is traditionally thought of, as in Richard Garcia's "Chickenhead."
See also
- Poetry
- Fu (literature)
- Flash fictionFlash fictionFlash fiction is a style of fictional literature or fiction of extreme brevity. There is no widely accepted definition of the length of the category...
- HaibunHaibunHaibun is a literary composition that combines prose and haiku. The range of haibun is broad and includes, but is not limited to, the following forms of prose: autobiography, biography, diary, essay, history, prose poem, short story and travel literature....
- Vignette (literature)Vignette (literature)In theatrical script writing, sketch stories, and poetry, a vignette is a short impressionistic scene that focuses on one moment or gives a trenchant impression about a character, an idea, or a setting and sometimes an object...
- Double RoomDouble RoomDouble Room was a bi-annual Web-based literary publication founded in 2002 by Peter Connors and Michael Neff of Web del Sol to explore the intersection of prose poetry with flash fiction....
(No longer publishing) - The English Mail-CoachThe English Mail-CoachThe English Mail-Coach is an essay by the English author Thomas De Quincey. A "three-part masterpiece" and "one of his most magnificent works," it first appeared in 1849 in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, in the October and December issues.The essay is divided into three sections:*Part I, "The...
- Suspiria de ProfundisSuspiria de ProfundisSuspiria de Profundis is one of the best-known and most distinctive literary works of the English essayist Thomas De Quincey.__FORCETOC__-Genre:...
External links
- The Prose Poem An International Journal produced by The Berkeley Electronic Press
- Contemporary Prose Poetry of Ogden McGahan
- Poetic Form: Prose Poem
- William Stafford and David Shumate describe prose poetry
- Contemporary Surrealist Prose Poems - J. Karl Bogartte