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Any comments about the genre. Some questions to possibly fuel your response:
Do you like it? Why/why not?
Do you think it's really poetry? Why/why not?
Do you write it?
Have you noticed some overused topics/words in the prose-poetry genre?
Thanks ^^ Just curious about others opinions on this genre. -
I dunno
It is hard to even define prose poetry. Even looking around on the net for concrete definition proves confusing. In some cases freeverse is considered prose poem. I have had comments left on poems that took three words out of context and called them too prosey.
I think that it is impossible to define what is absolute poetry until the poetry police are fully trained and instated into their proper posts to umm police the situation for us.
My like of poetry is purely on an individual read basis. It doesnt really matter the form. It is much like TV shows. It either catches me or it doesnt. The format often has little to do with the quality of the content. Of course, quality of content is also at the mercy of the readers oppinion so I suppose it is all pretty subjective.
I am not sure that I find any topic overused. I don't know if there is any such thing as an original topic anyway. Now the way the topic is approached is another story entirely. -
IT'S HOW JOURNALISTS BECOME POETS...!
I was told: "Write a speech; then, flower it up...!" And when you think about it, a good speech carries a certain amount of rhythm (it's how you draw the interest of your crowd) then, exaggerate your main points! It can take on any form, but rarely carries rhyme and probably very little alleration because after all, it is a speech and you don't to screw up your most convincing parts (sleek ships sail silent seas) in front of all those people!
Prose can be narrative or expositional (the telling of an event told in first, second, or third person; or an explanation of an event, respectively). The GETTYSBURG ADDRESS by Abraham Lincoln is a great example of a prose-theme and it's length. Real good speeches are short and to the point (like prose
should be). Personally, I think, if you can't convince your crowd in two medium-length paragraphs, you don't believe in your product! Thank you for listening!
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The way I feel is
it has to be poetry, not prose! I write prose and it transcends nothing. Poetry needs to go beyond - if the prose is poetic enough, it does, but otherwise, not. -
The historical distinction between prose & poetry is not as distinctive as it is now. Think of Beowulf, Sir Gawain & the Green Knight, The Dream of the Rood, The Wanderer or any other Old English poems.
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There's no easy way to reach a definition. I would not object to anyone who claims that almost all "prose-poems" are rubbish. I have struggled to understand why Baudelaire's "Spleen de Paris" and Rimbaud's "Illuminations" are so highly rated, whereas I have no difficulty in admiring "Le Bateau Ivre".
But then, I think I can write structured verse well enough to be able to recognise the achievement of a poet like Keats, Browning or Wordsworth when they are at their best (Wordsworth wrote some sad stuff at his worst). I can't do the same for prose-poems unless they use some of the techniques of structured verse, which probably means everything short of rhyme and rhythm (eg alliteration,euphony, elevated vocabulary and concepts, repetition for emphasis, etc). Where do you put Walt Whitman, the irregularity of Arnold's "Dover Beach", the rhyming of Fleur Adcock's "Poem Ended by a Death"? -
Rumi wrote poetic prose.
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I thought Dover Beach was Arnold's comment on the religious uncertainty in the late 19th century,particularly after Eliot's translation of Strauss (David Friedrich) & the works of Feuerbach.
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Who was Rumi?
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Who was Rumi?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumi
I don't know much about the bloke either to be honest. -
You should have been exposed to plenty of Rumi right here on AP by now. He's very popular with contest setters.
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Do I recognise (successful) one-up-manship? Who was D.F. Strauss? Which Eliot translated him? Feuerbach was only ever marginal for me, and that was a hell of a time ago. Do I need to explore him?
But you may well be right about Arnold. I had in mind the poem's structure rather than the significance of its content. -
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Do I recognise (successful) one-up-manship?
I don't know, you tell me. Have you spent a lot of time around powerful industrial cleaning agents recently?
Who was D.F. Strauss?
Wikipedia can be a very useful tool (don't take it as verbatim).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Strauss
Which Eliot translated him?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Eliot
Feuerbach was only ever marginal for me, and that was a hell of a time ago. Do I need to explore him?
Not if you don't want to. It's just that in 19th century Britain http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Britain many of his theories about Christianity had a huge effect on the intelligentsia even before Darwin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin & Wallace's theories of natural selectivity.
But you may well be right about Arnold. I had in mind the poem's structure rather than the significance of its content.
I believe he wrote it on his honeymoon (there is some debate about this). See ~ 'A Life of Matthew Arnold' by Nicholas Murray, Sceptre 1996, ISBN 0 340 62489 2
You may find this interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dover_Beach
I have a Victorian edition of Arnold's works. It's a second edition, if it had been a first edition it would have been worth a lot of money! I think it was printed just after his death.
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I can say I don't care for prose. It has nothing to do with the style. It's all those interesting contest I want to enter, but can't because they say in bold print Prose Only! And my seaming inability to write without using rhyme. :\ I try and try but the rhyme sneaks in anyway.
Now I have read some good poems that where prose, and I guess I consider it poetry, but the general lack of rhythm and meter in them tend to make it my least favorite form of poetry. Of course this is all just my opinion.
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Prose poems, aka free verse
Most often a cop-out by people too lazy to try rhyme and scansion (or not really capable of them). -
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Either that or much rhyming poetry is now considered a bit 'old hat'. Most Anglo-Saxon verse didn't rhyme neither did much of the poetry of the Classical world.
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Look at the Beats, whom I am sure you disdain; they tried their hand at rhyme and were more than capable of it. I can point you to some Ginsburg rhymes. I think most poets have an appreciation for (or background in classic literature) even if they pursued it wholey on their own. Take Frank O'Hara - his poetry contains light lines and an immediacy that would belie his appreciation for structured writing.
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"Old hat" might be the reason. I suspect it's really a pretext.
Anglosaxon may not have rhymed, but it was rhythmical and alliterative.
"Classical" was heavily structured. Silver and Mediaeval Latin was either structured or rhymed to a fault. Consider:-
Dum Diane vitrea sero lampas oritur
or
Hora novissima tempora pessima sunt. Vigilemus. -
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It's all Greek to me.
What about Langland then?
In a somer seson whan soft was the sonne
I shope me in shroudes as I a shepe were;
In habite as an hermite vnholy of workes
Went wyde in this world wonders to here.
Ac on a May mornynge on Maluerne hulles
Me byfel a ferly, of fairy me thougt:
I was very forwandred and went me to rest
Vnder a brode bank bi a bornes side
And as I lay and lened and looked in the wateres
I slombred in a slepying, it sweyued so merye.
Interestingly many of Shakespeare's sonnets are often criticised for having odd rhymes. They aren't so odd if you realise what accent & dialect he was almost certainly using.
Many translations of Asiatic poetry don't rhyme when the originals may very well have done (particularly Japanese) but it doesn't necessarily detract from the poetry itself. I don't think poetry has to rhyme particularly for it to be defined as poetry.
Walter de la Mare's Arabia has a beautiful rhythm & rhyme scheme & yet to quote Robert Graves criticism of it ~ 'If we are to trust travellers, there are no shades in Arabia except during sandstorms. There are no forests. The moon & stars are not visible at noon either there or anywhere else south of the Arctic Circle. The Arabians, Princes & all, do most of their riding at night. Flowers do appear in certain Arabian districts each Spring, but grow low on the ground & are soon burned up.'
So, it is all very well to rhyme then even if you are utilising a severe licentia poetica?
Rhyme is old. -
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LOL at Graves' assessment of de la Mare! I'll have to look Graves up again; didn't realize what a wit he could be.
Rhymes have root in ancient spells and so on, in magic... the language isn't "forced" when you know how to speak it, but I too find it very shortsighted to either insist on including it in order that something be considered "poetic" or to insist otherwise.
As you point out, a lot of Japanese things sound like they rhyme to my ear - doyos and so on. True I was mainly exposed to children's songs when I was there but they come out of an ancient tradition that obviously does not exclude rhyme and rhythm like you would think, to read these English haiku rulers, all Asian writing does or something! In fact, I have read that ancient Chinese poetry rhymed! -
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Chinese is a 'tonal' language & aurally inflected. Rhyming must have been a challenge.
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according to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_poetry
"All traditional forms of Chinese poetry are rhymed."
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Poetry is a shorthand, a distallation Poetry forces the reader to do more of the work than prose does. So, if a poem is a tight expression of something, using language and all its tools, what does it matter if it is in a paragraph or spread out over the page? Sometimes form helps tell your story - sometimes it just gets in the way.
Take a look at "Be Drunk," which concludes:
"And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking. . .ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: "It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish."
You could add line breaks and let it take up half a page. You could even force it to rhyme without making it any more of a poem.
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I agree with you to a large extent [though your statement about forcing it to rhyme turns me off, because I think writing can come, let's say, almost unbidden, in either rhyme or prose (stream of consciousness, automatically, whatever you want to say.) ] I don't object to what people sometimes dismiss as "cut-up prose" - it's simply a way of letting the writer see emphasis on words or lines and where to pause for effect!
I do understand though that structured verse and rhyme can not be mistaken for plain old prose, which is what an aircraft manual is, but what the work of a good novelist like John Updike or Anne Tyler also qualifies as being, while still being in the realm of what I would class as "poetry". -
Poetry is a shorthand
Ever read the 'Iliad' or Tennyson's 'In Memoriam'? -
You are a 'grammabuff' ? Could you please explain to me the meaning of:
"...a distallation Poetry forces the reader to do more of the work than prose does." -
my eyes are tired
separated lines help me read
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i honestly find no difference between poetry and prose. I think both are simple expressions of the soul. How you format your writing doesn't make you a poet. A poet is someone who can take complex thoughts, feelings, images, ideas, and events and explain them them to others through comparisions, emotions, imagery, personification, etc.
I cannot stand many many people on this site because they write their feelings in all these formats for poetry that mimic how others did so, and think this makes them better poets than others. Yet, the best work i've ever read here on this site and in my life was unique to the point of non recognition. They could very well have written a sonnet, but I wouldn't have noticed. The words really drew me in.
So I say, there is no difference. and to not recognize such a link between prose and poetry, you should be re-evaluating your poetic lisences
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ha HA! Try writing 400 facade reports for all of the Columbia University residential buildings in New York City some fall and then tell me what a "simple expression" prose is (though the word "cheneau" is poetic, I'll give you that.)
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You're missing my point. Poetry isn't about form. It isn't about format and pretty words. some of the best poetry out there right now is coming from rappers and lyricists. to be perfectly frank, the majority of people find intellectual poetry to complex and boring. and thats why the "traditional" form of poetry is dying. it sucks. lol. its really boring people trying to make something sound pretty. Poetry is simple because you can look at something and just say it. Only because you feel it. If you don't feel it, you're poetry lacks emotion too. If you have to actually sit and think about line to line to line when writing a poem, you're not writing good poetry. IMO. I personally sit down and just write it. I don't edit, I don't change it. I just let it flow. and i hope to capture the emotions and imagery I need to convey what I'm feeling or seeing.
so argue poetry and prose. There's is real no definition to either. No one really knows what they are. So why not just enjoy whats being done, rather than trying to impress others?
(please bear in mind this whole comment is hypothetical. I'm not speaking about you personally. I'm speaking in general) -
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Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's back up a few hundred years here. Did you know that poetry was a "lyrical" thing since the beginning? Yes, indeed, poetry was "sung". It was "lyrics".
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yes but im not arguing that. lol. All i'm saying is that what makes poetry soooo amazing and fun and beautiful is when you read or hear works from poets that just completely express the writer's emotions and thoughts in a way that you feel them and think them yourself.
a lot of poets dont do that anymore. they stick to these forms of poetry. Its like if they write a poem in this form, it'll look and sound good regardless of their writing ability. Now, don't get me wrong, there can be good poetry written this way. but I'd say 9 out of ten aren't that wonderful. they're usually pretty boring. I personally will blow my brains out if I see another shakespearean sonnet. I love "prose" because its either free verse, or rhyme with no format. its just there. its just thoughts. even lyrics can be agrivating to read or hear sometimes because it sounds forced. like the writer was just trying to fill a space. when the writer is focusing so much on these specific needs for the poem they lose the overall feeling. thus instead of transfering the emotion into the work, they only transfer the aggrivation of filling these holes and the work and thought that went into building the poem, not what inspired it. and that just makes poetry seem so, unexpressive and boring.
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Who left the Italics on again? Can someone please pull the plug before we burn the house down.
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GayMilitant seems to be arguing for "stream of consciousness. This can be all very well in its way. It's really the content which makes the context. On structured poems, I have wondered whether MMM ("Meaning/Metre/Music")might be a useful mnemonic. Then again, I have been wondering whether it might be possible to build something on or around the iambic pentameter "The deepest thoughts expressed in clearest words".
The latter would cover both prose and poetry. It might also serve as a standard to be aspired to.
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FluorescentFixation
Sep 9 6:48 PM
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