# What makes prose a poem?



## PiP (May 6, 2017)

I am curious. What is a prose poem or is it just 'purple prose'? 

Please can you share examples and explain why they are poems and not prose.

ETA I've read some prose labelled poems and I'm left scratching my head.

Here is an example

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/still-life-rayfish


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## Ptolemy (May 6, 2017)

Poetic stylistic choices. I think that's what makes prose poetry poetry. Because, for prose poetry to be poetry it needs the characteristics of poetry right? I believe prose poetry needs to have a poetic rhythm, language play, a focus on images rather than traditional narrative etc. You cannot just willy nilly toss together a couple paragraphs and call it "prose poetry" you need to actually take time and formulate it to have the characteristics of poetry, because if it doesn't have the characteristics, how can it be considered poetry?


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## PiP (May 6, 2017)

So does the poem I've linked to have these characteristics?
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/still-life-rayfish


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## Ptolemy (May 6, 2017)

PiP said:


> So does the poem I've linked to have these characteristics?
> https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/still-life-rayfish



While I'm not a classical poet, but I'm pretty sure it does. It has a focus on the images in the poem, specifically on the rayfish and it's importance over the arching piece of prose. See, I'm not a poet so I cannot really comment on the flow of the piece so large, since I focus more on a straight prose rhythm rather than a poetic meter or anything like that, but it flows like poetry. And there is definitive language play.


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## PiP (May 6, 2017)

But doesn't prose use meter as well so it flows? If not it would be clunky and disjointed. Prose also uses such devices as similes and metaphors.

So if we take



> Soutine attempts to keep the color of his first carcasses fresh with buckets of blood. The neighbors hate the stench and the flies but he continues to pour blood over the bodies until he is ordered by the police to stop. [/FONT][FONT=&Verdana]Only then does he use formaldehyde. He isn’t preserving the flesh, just refreshing it, maintaining the life-color of the carcass and painting that blood as lush. He is not emulating and there is no reminiscence.



What is poetic about this?


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## Ptolemy (May 6, 2017)

PiP said:


> But doesn't prose have meter as well so it flows? If not it would be clunky and disjointed. Prose also uses such devices as similes and metaphors.
> 
> So if we take
> 
> ...



Well, I just did a more refined search, since my initial observations were a baseline of what prose poetry is. Prose poetry is a piece of work that contains _both _poetic and prose characteristics. So the point still runs true: If it doesn't have the characteristics, how can it be considered one or both? So, prose poetry is a work that contains both a poetic meter, with poetic language, metaphors, whilst focusing on images along with having the choice to advance a narrative, whilst also not being written in classic poetic verse. 

So to answer your question: It's not supposed to be poetic. 

That's my fault there, I kind of assumed that poetic prose was just a poem expanded into more detail when it a completely different fish. Prose poetry has the option to advance the narrative and it looks like classic prose (aka written in paragraphs), while focusing on the characteristics of poetry like images, _instances _of poetic meter, and contains language play. 

Again, whoopsie on my assumption.


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## PiP (May 6, 2017)

> Ptolemy said:
> 
> 
> > So to answer your question: It's not supposed to be poetic.
> ...


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## Ptolemy (May 6, 2017)

PiP said:


> > So if it's not meant to be poetic I wonder why it is called prose poetry?
> 
> 
> 
> ...





PiP said:


> 'I discovered a journal in the children's ward, and read, I'm a mother, my little boy has cancer. Further on, a girl has written, this is my nineteenth operation. She says, sometimes it's easier to write than to talk, and I'm so afraid. She's offered me a page in the book. My son is sleeping in the room next door. This afternoon, I held my whole weight to his body while a doctor drove needles deep into his leg. My son screamed, Daddy, they're hurting me, don't let them hurt me, make them stop. I want to write, how brave you are, but I need a little courage of my own, so I write, forgive me, I know I let them hurt you, please don't worry. If I have to, I can do it again.'
> 
> It looks like prose, but this one resists traditional narrative or character. The voice of the narrator is never expounded upon outside of that he is a father. It's not easy to interpret too and when read aloud, it has poetic rhythm and word play. There is clear consideration in the use of the words.
> 
> ...


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## Phil Istine (May 6, 2017)

The part of the first link you posted didn't feel poetic to me except for a tiny piece of internal rhyme which may have been incidental (flesh ... refreshing, ecorche - assuming this is pronounced how it looks ... auctioned, paintings ... banker).  However, the link with this and poetry seems tenuous at best to my untrained eye.  Although large chunks of it appear to have a meter of alternate beats, parts do not.  This is probably the case with prose too.
However, I don't know enough to come right out and say that it isn't poetry.


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## RHPeat (May 6, 2017)

Here's the dilemma:

Prose and poetry. 

Realize right off 
there is poetic prose 
and 
there is prose poem

Well they are going to look similar in form on the written page. Poetry tends to shorter than prose and generally written in verses. A prose poem can be versified or not. While prose is never versified.

 Prose tends to be longer than poetry and is written in sentences that run on together without any breath pauses as a rhythm. 

Now comes the glitch. 

Both depend on phrasing which cause pauses within the lines. With running sentences after one another as in prose the pause and become somewhat fuzzier. 
While in the more condensed language of poetry becomes far more apparent. 

Now there is another consideration of great concern. The metaphorical and figurative use of language. 

This definitely poetic, but poetic prose uses it as well. 
I would say however that poetry's use of figurative language and metaphor is predominately more condensed and driven; 
while prose will elongate the metaphor and less use of figurative language. 

Poetry is always about showing as much as you can in very few words, 
while prose as a whole can use pages on a single subject while actually telling its intent. 

So "more" condensed use of language using metaphors and other forms of figurative speech are far "more" poetic. 

When prose tells it isn't considered as something unusual. 
When poems show it isn't considered something unusual. 
But turn them around and you have a big problem. 

Now the prose poem: it will have more articles and pronouns in the text poetry in general. This makes it more prose like. And the sentences will wrap as well or sometimes be justified to a length and still allowed to wrap around as in the reading format. So lets have some examples. Below:


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## Kevin (May 6, 2017)

PiP said:


> What is poetic about this?


its all about concept and idea, not actual action. There is no real story. It is not meant that anyone is actually bathing anything in blood to make it appear life-like. By the way, I dreamed I answered you, I dreamed I was married and living in a house where there was once a child who grew to adulthood and then left us alone and dejected staring at electronic screens trying to connect with something, but not really.


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## Bard_Daniel (May 6, 2017)

I REALLY like this discussion. Great information and analysis everyone! : D

And props Pip for bringing it up. Very important and relevant topic.


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## Darkkin (May 6, 2017)

I'm  freak for form and solid rhyme scheme, but when I was going back through some of my oldest work I happened across this.  It is a curious piece.  Not prose, yet with too much structure to be considered free verse poetry.  A prose poem perhaps?

Footprints of the Puppet  (Paragraph Form)

Strings broken and dangling, tenderly gathered trace through her slim calloused fingers.  Deftly those fingers fly, weaving a web, intricate, yet strong.  A cloak of illusions, shivers bright, a net to break a fall.  A bit of wonder woven from those ghostly frays, her strings, strings that once held the puppet, bound and strangling.

Free of strings and tethers, words, weighted and barbed—One step, cautious, she teeters unaided, a wobbling fall.  The ground rushes up to kiss her chin— Iron paints her tongue as gravel savaged her hands.  Embers flare deep in her eyes.  Not an easy journey forging a new path along the ebb tide shore.  A single step, to walk away merely the first battle--But to discover one's own wings, well that really is a story.


Footprints of the Puppet  (Standard Stanza)

Strings broken and dangling, tenderly gathered 
trace through her slim calloused fingers. 
Deftly those fingers fly, weaving a web, intricate, yet strong.
A cloak of illusions, shivers bright, a net to break a fall, 
a bit of wonder woven from those ghostly frays, her strings, 
strings that once held the puppet, bound and strangling.

Free of strings and tethers, words, weighted and barbed—
One step, cautious, she teeters unaided, a wobbling fall. 
The ground rushes up to kiss her chin— 
Iron paints her tongue as gravel savaged her hands. 
Embers flare deep in her eyes. Not an easy journey
 forging a new path along the ebb tide shore.
 A single step, to walk away merely the first battle--
But to discover one's own wings, well that really is a story.


Two formats, the same words.  How much weight is given to the visual aspect of a piece?  Stanzas verse standard paragraph?  Also consider some of the things we've seen here on the forums.  We've had instances when folks have posted work that is clearly prose on the poetry boards.  It is a poem because I say it's a poem doesn't always work.  With a prose poem you are working for the glory in the flower, the radiant heart of imagery and emotion.  The structure is more relaxed, but the ideas are potent like a rich tea, deeply steeped.  It shouldn't seem like random ideas strung together without rhyme or reason.  As similar as the sun is to a starfish.  Poetry is elemental, filled with an inherent intensity.  Prose, while it has reflections of that intensity is ubiquitous as a starfish.   Poetry is a bite of a perfect apple.  Prose is an apple pie.  A prose poem, you sneak a taste of the apple, and still enjoy the pie.

Like waffle flavours it is subjective to the reader's palette.  (And yes, this post is a load of waffle, with fruit (strawberries). )


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## Phil Istine (May 7, 2017)

Darkkin said:


> I'm  freak for form and solid rhyme scheme, but when I was going back through some of my oldest work I happened across this.  It is a curious piece.  Not prose, yet with too much structure to be considered free verse poetry.  A prose poem perhaps?
> 
> Footprints of the Puppet  (Paragraph Form)
> 
> ...



Now this has given me a _lot_ to think about - especially regarding how much is about the appearance of a piece?


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## Bloggsworth (May 7, 2017)

Why all these long posts, it's simple - If the writer says it's a poem, it's a poem...


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## Sebald (May 7, 2017)

Very interesting thread. I tend to agree with Bloggsworth. A poem can be anything. A piece of prose can be anything. It's up to the writer to categorise it. The key thing would be if they've done it well enough to call it a successful attempt.

It's like the Norwegian novelist, Karl Ove Knausgård. He caused a stir by insisting that his autobiographical books (a series of six, called collectively 'My Struggle') were fiction.

They're so witty and great, he won over his critics (and made people think again about how humans turn 'life' into words).

So yeah, anything goes. But the artist has to know what they're doing.


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## aj47 (May 7, 2017)

Bloggsworth said:


> Why all these long posts, it's simple - If the writer says it's a poem, it's a poem...





			
				me said:
			
		

> This is a poem.



Is that a poem?  Does it become one if I say it is? Does it revert to prose if I say it is not a poem?


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## Sebald (May 7, 2017)

astroannie said:


> Is that a poem?  Does it become one if I say it is? Does it revert to prose if I say it is not a poem?



Ha ha. Yes.


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## Ptolemy (May 7, 2017)

astroannie said:


> Is that a poem?  Does it become one if I say it is? Does it revert to prose if I say it is not a poem?



Yep. It is technically. Bloggsworth has an excellent point, even if it is mired in humor. 

It can be as subjective as you want it to be. If you say it's a poem then heck, it's a poem, it may not be the _best _poem, but if you believe it is a poem then hey, it's a poem to someone, and that's all a poem needs to be to be a poem. Sure, there is stylistic things to adhere too, but still... what's the point? The definitions are human made constructs, and are always open to discussion and interpretation. If you say it's a poem, I have have the right to critique and give my opinions on what I believe the 'poem' is, but if you truly believe it as a poem then it is a poem. 

And the same rings true with prose, sure, there are rules, there are regulations that are set up by us, humans. Who says we need to adhere to them? Society? The government? Some writing coalition? I don't know. If I write "Fish have legs" and I consider it prose, then heck it's prose to me, so at least to someone it's prose. 

Everyone has their interpretations of everything, and some may choose to intrepret your quote as either "prose" or "poetry" it's just up to them.


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## Sebald (May 7, 2017)

astroannie said:


> Is that a poem?  Does it become one if I say it is? Does it revert to prose if I say it is not a poem?



As Ptolemy said, being a good poem is a whole 'nother story.

Experimental fiction plays around with these ideas all the time. 

If you get the chance, look up the 'Oulipo' movement (a group of surrealist writers, started in the 1960's). Their name means "workshop of potential literature", and they tried to see how far they could stretch the limits of fiction.

Sounds dry, but some of it is great. Mind-blowing. Often funny.


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## aj47 (May 7, 2017)

So, if I say a tail is a leg do dogs now have five legs? I'm not sure I'm ready to buy "because I say so" as a legitimate definition.


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## Sebald (May 7, 2017)

If it's a fictional dog, yes.


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## Darkkin (May 7, 2017)

Because I said so is a nonquantifable parameter delineation too often applied because a writer hasn't taken enough time to consider the identity of their piece.  Good writing is defensible.  If there is merit to the writer's claim there should be evidence to support their assertions beyond a mere because I said so.  That argument doesn't work with most four-year olds...


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## Sebald (May 7, 2017)

Darkkin said:


> Because I said so is a nonquantifable parameter delineation too often applied because a writer hasn't taken enough time to consider the identity of their piece.  Good writing is defensible.  If there is merit to the writer's claim there should be evidence to support their assertions beyond a mere because I said so.  That argument doesn't work with most four-year olds...



Great writing is always defensible. But you have to have an open mind to understand the explanation.


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## Bloggsworth (May 7, 2017)

astroannie said:


> Is that a poem?  Does it become one if I say it is? Does it revert to prose if I say it is not a poem?



Yes.


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## Ptolemy (May 7, 2017)

Still, the logic behind the assertion is true. The opinion of the reader is subjective and always will be. It's not just "because I said so" it's due to their opinions on the poem. There is nothing stating that that is neither a poem or prose. I can interpret it as either as much as I wish. I don't believe it to be so black and white. If someone's opinion is that it is poetry, the heck, it's poetry to that person, if someone believes it is prose, then heck it is prose to that person. It all depends on the persons subjective point of view. Constructs do not always need to be followed, I'm pretty sure anything and everything could be considered poetry if someone considers it to be poetry.

What is stopping me from just going out and creating my own form of poetry and calling it poetry? There's nothing stating I can't. That's how most poetry forms came to be right? Someone thought about it, and wrote it down. It may not be the best form of poetry, but if I think it is a poetic form, do I really need the approval of a board of "poetic experts" for it to be considered poetry?


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## Darkkin (May 7, 2017)

Pragmatism and a little bit of logic behind the other's reasoning is always helpful in seeing things from the other's perspective.  But from a defensible standpoint, the number of writers who actually take the time to explain their perspective are generally minimal.  It is the internet so it simply is, there is no need for why.  All well and good from a personal standpoint, but on an open forum, it won't fly.  Readers, writers need to be cognizant of the why.


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## Sebald (May 7, 2017)

Darkkin said:


> Pragmatism and a little bit of logic behind the other's reasoning is always helpful in seeing things from the other's perspective.  But from a defensible standpoint, the number of writers who actually take the time to explain their perspective are generally minimal.  It is the internet so it simply is, there is no need for why.  All well and good from a personal standpoint, but on an open forum, it won't fly.  Readers, writers need to be cognizant of the why.



If you're talking about people learning the rules of poetry, that's true. But it seems like a different issue.


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## Ariel (May 7, 2017)

I disagree that it is a different issue. Poetry has many variations and variety but there are some strictures that define it as poetry. Merely claiming it to be poetry does not make it so.  I'll dig through my books about poetry and bring more definitive information about the matter.


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## RHPeat (May 7, 2017)

Ariel said:


> I disagree that it is a different issue. Poetry has many variations and variety but there are some strictures that define it as poetry. Merely claiming it to be poetry does not make it so.  I'll dig through my books about poetry and bring more definitive information about the matter.



Have fun it will be argued to the end of time. But do check out Charles Baudelaire for he said it would be the rage of the future in poetry. Here's one of his prose poems:

*Never Be Sober *
Charles Baudelaire 
_from The Prose Poems and La Fanfarlo _

You must always be intoxicated. That sums it all up: it's the only question. In order not to feel the horrible burden of Time which breaks your back and bends you down to earth, you must be unremittingly intoxicated. 

But on what? Wine, poetry, virtue, as you please. But never be sober. 

And if it should chance that sometimes, on the steps of a palace, on the green grass of a ditch, in the bleak solitude of your room, you wake up and your intoxication has already diminished or disappeared, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, ask everything that flees, everything that groans, everything that rolls, everything that sings, everything that speaks, ask them what time it is and the wind, the wave, the bird, the star, the clock, will reply: “It's time to be intoxicated! If you do not wish to be one of the tortured slaves of Time, never be sober; never ever be sober! Use wine, poetry, or virtue, as you please.”


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## Darkkin (May 8, 2017)

I'm going to play devil's advocate for just a moment and say that the identity of a piece whether it is poetry or prose rests with the due diligence of the writer.  Have they considered what they know of prose, or poetry?  For example, I write narratives and fairy tales, yet they are told in stylized verse.  If I posted such a thing to the fiction or scif fi/fantasy boards chances are they would be moved to the poetry boards.  (And rightly so...) 

 The question then becomes why?  If they are fiction, if they are clearly telling a story? It is a parable so why can't I call it prose?  Take a look at _Aesop's Fables_.  I use complete sentences, punctuation, proper capitalization, the whole nine yards.  Bible verses do the same thing.  Structurally, it is written in verse form, not standard paragraphs, but the majority of the bible's content is considered prose, not poetry, the major exceptions being the _Psalms_ and _The Songs of Solomon_​.

What makes a story told in verse, poetry and not prose?  It comes down to the writer's intent.  With Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_ he was writing poetry, same with Longfellow's _Song of Hiawatha_.  _The Divine Comedy _by Alighieri, the list goes on.   They were the inspirations at the root of the idea.  To tell a story within a solid frame work of rhyme.  Prose was not the primary focus, yes there are a few elements reflected there, but what features of the starfish does the reader see within the sun?

The conguency of prose to poetry is much easier to delineate than poetry into prose.  How is a starfish like the sun, verses how is the sun like a starfish.  Prose being more about the language and the ideas and less about the structure.  Poetry being about the potency and less about the filler.  With a focus on structure, rhythm, meaning, and the ever annoying, sometimes cloying rhyme.

Anybody can call a sentence a poem.  That is their perogative and right, but it doesn't make it _true_.  It is the blessing and the curse of writing.  There really is no wrong or right way to go about it.  But some methods are decidedly better than others.  Taking five minutes to decide what your intentions for a particular piece are is one of the better methods.

Because once a piece is submitted and the fourth wall goes up, it is out of the writer's hands.  If the writer's intentions are muddled and a reader takes the time to say something about the issue, chances are the  _Because I Say It Is _reasoning is not going to fly.  Yes, there is grey area.  There is a lot of crossover.  It's writing it isn't all black and white, but there are known areas of black and white.  These areas are guidelines, not laws.  But it helps to know the guidelines before trying to break them.  And that is the issue that so many people miss.  Readers have a tendency to think and those that didn't take that aspect of making one's writing public occasionally end up getting stung.

Why matters because it is the why the generally determines the what.  Is it prose?  Is it poetry?


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## Sebald (May 8, 2017)

Ariel said:


> I disagree that it is a different issue. Poetry has many variations and variety but there are some strictures that define it as poetry. Merely claiming it to be poetry does not make it so.  I'll dig through my books about poetry and bring more definitive information about the matter.



You seem to be saying experimental poetry doesn't exist. But it does. I've seen it with my own eyes.


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## Ariel (May 8, 2017)

Sebald said:


> You seem to be saying experimental poetry doesn't exist. But it does. I've seen it with my own eyes.



On the contrary.  I've written experimental poetry.  I'm saying that just presenting something and claiming it as poetry does not make it poetry.


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## Sebald (May 8, 2017)

Ariel said:


> On the contrary.  I've written experimental poetry.  I'm saying that just presenting something and claiming it as poetry does not make it poetry.



Imagine you write a long poem. A press likes it, and publishes it. Nobody buys it. You might step back and decide to forget the piece. Or burn it. Rework it into something new. Or, after a lot of thought, it occurs to you it could work as a novella. The publisher releases it as fiction. It's a bestseller.

Thus, the piece has been both poetry and prose. Because the author said so.


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## Ariel (May 8, 2017)

Poetry, synonymous with verse, is defined simply as a piece of writing which is _metered._  Prose, by contrast, is writing which is _un-metered_.  Even more simply a poem can be identified by the quintessential unit which defines it at a glance—the line break.  Michelle Boisseau and Robert Wallace explain the difference thusly, “Verse is a system of writing in which the right margin, the line turn, is set _internally, _by something in the line itself (29).”  Prose, by contrast has the right margin set externally, “by the printer, not the writer [noparse](28)[/noparse].”   However, Lewis Turco goes beyond the mere line break in his definition to define prose as, “The ordinary form of written or spoken language, _without_ metrical structure (4).”  

Prose poetry, then, must bridge the contrast between prose and poetry to be identified.  Edward Hirsch points out, “The prose poem takes advantage of its hybrid nature—it avails itself of the elements of prose while foregrounding the devices of poetry (489).”  It is in the very contrasts that prose poems gain their meaning. It is a form dealing structurally, primarily, in opposites.  Stephen Adams says, “the relation of free verse to prose poem is one of complementary opposition: if one function of free verse is to undo and make visible the conventions of verse, preserving only the lineation, so one function, at least, of the prose poem is to undo and make visible the prose . . . uphold ideals of transparency, conciseness, and linearity.  But the most characteristic poems present ‘prose’ which is not transparent but opaque—non-sequential, non-rational, non-referential.  If the traditional categories of prose composition are narrative, description, exposition, and argumentation, then the prose poem typically avoids or subverts those categories (197).”  So prose poetry _looks_ like prose in structure but follows more poetic conceits by blurring the lines between the two.

The form itself defies the expectations of prose and the expectations of poetry.  It is related to free verse in that it deconstructs meter and transcends poetic conventions to redefine writing.  Where free verse plays with line breaks by making the break seem arbitrary thus giving meaning and emphasis to the line, prose poetry breaks convention by making line breaks meaningless.  Adams states, “the prose poem rejects poetry’s ‘dream of itself as a pure _other_ set apart in sublime isolation;’ instead, ‘because it gestures toward opening up literature to prosaic speech, themes, and subject matter previously considered unworthy of aesthetic attention, the prose poem serves to legitimate and, at the same time, undermine literary culture (196).”

Boisseau and Wallace assert that prose poems are, “short compositions in prose that ask for (and reward) the concentrated attention usually given to poetry.  Prose poems can remind us that besides the architecture of line, stanza, and form, poems are also structured around the interplay of ideas, feelings, images, and metaphor (89).”  The form itself defies the expectations of prose and the expectations of poetry.  It is related to free verse in that it deconstructs meter and transcends poetic conventions to redefine writing.  Where free verse plays with line breaks by making the break seem arbitrary thus giving meaning and emphasis to the line, prose poetry breaks convention by making line breaks meaningless.  

The defining features of a prose poem then are that it challenges the strictures of both prose _and _poetry—blurring the line between the two by eschewing the metrical structure and line breaks of poetry and obfuscating the prosaic.

*Works Cited*

Adams, Stephen. Poetic Designs. Broadview Press. 1997.

Boisseau, Michelle and Wallace, Robert.  Writing Poems. 6[SUP]th[/SUP] ed., Pearson Longman. 2004.

Hirsch, Edward. Poet’s Glossary. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2014.

Turco, Lewis. The Book of Forms. 3[SUP]rd[/SUP] ed., University Press of New England. 2000.


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## sas (May 8, 2017)

The best unrecognized, as such, prose poetry, for my money is:


I Have A Dream, Martin Luther King

The Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln


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## Ariel (May 8, 2017)

Sebald said:


> Imagine you write a long poem. A press likes it, and publishes it. Nobody buys it. You might step back and decide to forget the piece. Or burn it. Rework it into something new. Or, after a lot of thought, it occurs to you it could work as a novella. The publisher releases it as fiction. It's a bestseller.
> 
> Thus, the piece has been both poetry and prose. Because the author said so.



Quite frankly, reworking a piece of work from a poem into a novella are not the same as simply saying "this poem's no longer a poem, it's a novella."  It's re-working a poem into a novella.


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## Sebald (May 8, 2017)

In the example I gave, has exactly the same piece been both poetry and prose?


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## Ariel (May 8, 2017)

No.  Re-working a piece changes the fundamental nature of it.


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## Sebald (May 8, 2017)

Imagine you haven't changed even one comma.


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## Ariel (May 8, 2017)

I would love for you to explain to me how a poem can become a novella simply because you "re-worked it" without changing a single comma.  Quite frankly, you're being obtuse to simply play the devil's advocate.  I'm not inclined to play your game.


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## RHPeat (May 8, 2017)

I'm with you 100% Ariel.

Sometimes it is total ego that presents something as poetry that in truth is utter crap. And to think if a person calls themselves a poet makes everything thing they write into poetry is ludicrous. We all write and rewrite to create a real piece of art. Poetry is only found through the test of time; not by claiming it to be poetry because you made it. Writing has to stand on its own merit as an art form both as prose and poetry. ART is what separates a bunch of weird people from a culture within a civilization. I'm a poet therefor I write poems is hogwash. That is not poetry; that is graffiti. Public excrement doesn't make something into art. ART is recognizable by many artists not a single person as the creator. I can cut a block of wood into a square cube and say it's car, does that make it a car. Hell no. A car is far more than a block of wood. This is one of the oldest jerk arounds out there. I say it so, so you have to believe me because I made it. It's laughable as the cosmic joke on art and the civilized world or even any primitive culture as far as that goes. The primitive might slit your throat for making the protest and then shrink you head. Now that's permanent art, and quite the political statement. 

a poet friend
RH Peat


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## Sebald (May 8, 2017)

Your post was a really useful addition to understanding prose poems.

I seem to have taken things in another direction, after astroannie's comment that four words and a full-stop can't be a poem.


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## Sebald (May 8, 2017)

My above post was meant for Ariel. I'm sorry I came across as bolshy.

RH, on the other hand.. erm, let's agree to disagree.


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## RHPeat (May 8, 2017)

* Sebald*

Get this: there are many out there that want to separate the arts from humanity when in truth it is the arts that create humanity/ civilization & culture. Why? Here's why: the arts are inclusive and not exclusive when it comes to the human experience. So forget the ego trips of I'm the poet. If you are really a poet, others will recognize you as the poet by what you do. You don't have to tell them that at all. You just have to show them a real poem that changes who they are as part of humanity. Now that is what art does. It evokes, emotes and provokes feeling in others by shifting their consciousness. It is *not dumping* your feelings on them to come out the other end with nothing at all. Remember — NOT through intellect alone — it is not exclusive, but instead through experience which is inclusive. This is what is meant by show don't tell. Moving the reader consciousness beyond where they are in the moment. Be it prose-poem, poem or prose as art it all shifts the reader's consciousness. But it also includes the visual arts as well and sound arts (music) which poetry fall into as both written and sound as song. Have a good day my poet friend. 

So you might also say that the prose poem contains song to be a good prose poem. 


RH Peat


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## JustRob (May 10, 2017)

This is a fascinating thread. I must read it properly some time. I have never claimed to be a poet; in fact my most successful efforts in that discipline are probably the ones that quite honestly deny that I am. The only poem of mine that I would offer as being genuine contains only sixteen words and describes poetry itself, so if brevity is at the heart of poetry maybe I got things right there.

I claim that I seldom post poetry because my prose is my poetry, so I ought to have something to say here, but not being a poet nor understanding its fundamental requirements I don't know how I would approach that. As a governor of my auspicious old school I receive the annual school magazine and when I saw the top submissions in their poetry contest I wondered just what definition of poetry they were working to, but then I get the same feeling when tiptoeing through the poetry forum here. So, purely as a prose writer I'll continue here.

On the spur of the moment I submitted an entry to one of the recent poetry challenges just hours after it was opened and I spent just a couple of minutes on the entire task. It's HERE. Behind the scenes someone mentioned to me that I use a fair number of filler words, like those "but"s and "and"s, in my poetry but my response was that that "poetry" is actually prose just arranged to look like poetry and most of those words are necessary to the correct syntax of the sentences. In fact in my congratulatory post to the winner I stated that I would return to allowing my prose to extend the full width of the page, because that was all that my entry was.

Going in the other direction, some time ago I took a couple of sentences from a chapter in my novel and reposted them as poetry in the poetry section, just to illustrate how a prose writer can use poetic techniques within their work. In this case the effect was created quite unconsciously and I had to consciously break the persistent rhythm to force the prose back into its normal arrhythmic form in later sentences or it would have looked ridiculous. That's HERE. I suspect that only a poet would notice the persistent drumbeat rhythm within the prose which created an aural tattoo to supplement the visual one that the words described, a decidedly poetic device I think. I left it in the chapter at the time but it disappeared when the whole chapter was rewritten later I believe.

HERE's my response to a challenge to find a rhyme for the word "requiem". Note that here the punctuation is _exactly_ that used in conventional prose, the whole limerick being a single prose sentence if one simply removes the line breaks.

I delight in including ludicrous alliteration in my prose, ideally as a tongue-twister spoken by someone while eating or drinking to highlight its incongruity, but people do sometimes do that by accident in reality. Somehow our brains just associate similar words because of that alliteration and out comes an accidental tongue-twister despite the difficult physical speech process involved. In my novel in one place a character struggles with such alliteration while eating a cake, while elsewhere another character chokes on his whiskey when uttering something equally ludicrous. It makes sense that the centres in the brain that appreciate poetry, if only at a rudimentary level, will also create similar effects when an opportunity arises in speaking, even at inopportune moments.

Regarding the examples that you gave, PiP, I didn't see sufficient poetic characteristics in the original in the OP to label it as prose poetry but I will accept Campbell Mcgrath's example as such. I don't think mere purple prose is so well structered, but what do I know? Answers on the back of a postage stamp, preferably a very rare one, please.

Fade to purple.


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## PiP (May 10, 2017)

JustRob said:


> Regarding the examples that you gave, PiP, I didn't see sufficient poetic characteristics in the original in the OP to label it as prose poetry but I will accept Campbell Mcgrath's example as such. I don't think mere purple prose is so well structered, but what do I know? Answers on the back of a postage stamp, preferably a very rare one, please.
> 
> .



I think given all the replies and subsequent learning curve, I should print off


https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/still-life-rayfish

and highlight  the poetic devices used/or not in the 'poem' and see where we go from there.


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## Kevin (May 10, 2017)

sas said:


> The best unrecognized, as such, prose poetry, for my money is:
> 
> 
> I Have A Dream, Martin Luther King
> ...


  Well, the 1st one for sure is... He's talking metaphor after metaphor. The 2nd one I couldn't get through (or past the 2nd line).   Something can be two things at once, surely? I mean, a dog is a mammal, but not all mammals are dogs... And if they are unrecognized.. It just goes to show ( if they say it's not) that the so-called experts are dumbshits; their opinions, questionable.  It also shows that the field ( literary expert) is wide open.


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## sas (May 11, 2017)

It surprises me, Kevin, that you cannot find the poetry in Lincoln's words. Poetry is not just metaphor, it is the cadence, juxtaposition of words and images, among others. 

I was remiss in not mentioning Winston Churchill's speech, as prose poetry: We Shall Fight on the Beaches. His mastery of poetry with political oratory is unmatched. We now have a powerful world leader who neither elevates his speech, nor those around him. We cover the ears of our children. Those orators of the past have no emulators. Pity. Pity. Pity.

.


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## sas (May 11, 2017)

BTW:

I might add those poetic orators, like MLK, Lincoln, and Churchill led the world not into hell, but out of it. What leader today can say the same? 

Maybe our loss of poetry, within, created them. 

sas


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## Kevin (May 11, 2017)

sas said:


> It surprises me, Kevin, that you cannot find the poetry in Lincoln's words. Poetry is not just metaphor, it is the cadence, juxtaposition of words and images, among others.
> 
> 
> 
> .


I need to force myself to read it. I think MLK is easier because it's audio.


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## John 3 (May 26, 2017)

Yes, the only value a poem has is what the reader gives to it.


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## clark (Aug 6, 2017)

My goodness!  There's quite a number of stylistically skilful shit-spreaders eagerly (and at length) contributing lavish swaths of their product-of-choice to this thread, aren't there?  Playing Devil's Advocate is a wonderful strategy to avoid _engaging _a subject of discussion, the available fall-back always there:  "Whoa now!  that wasn't _me! _I was just playing a role to encourage_ you _to do all the thinking and hard work this topic demands." Then there's the dismissive self-styled comedian who announces that he grabbed a few lines of something he just dashed off, and submitted it to a poetry contest and did very well.  Message? _"__Lookit me!  Lookit me!  Lookit the plum on the end of my thumb!" _But the straw that prompted me to write this post is the corker nearby, to the effect that a poem's "value" resides in what "the reader *gives *to it."  I'm going to assume the author of that throwaway remark did so in haste, just wasn't thinking, just flung it out there because he'd heard somewhere that 'beauty was in the eye of the beholder' and it sounded ok so, what the hell!. . .toss it in the ring.

How else to account for such blatant idiocy?


Does it ever occur to the naysayers and cynics among you that great poetry from cultures vastly separated from us by time, geography, and cultural values is read to this day, and studied to this day as ART, not merely as 'something that survived.?'  Why are the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles. and Euripides performed, to this day?  Why are PhD dissertations written on the epic qualities of the _Iliad, Odyssey, _and the Aeneid, to this day?  Why are the Norse sagas and _Beowulf _read as literary ART, to this day?  And why do the poetical works of Shakespeare and Donne and Milton and Blake and Burns and Tennyson and Keats and. . .and. . .and. . .continue to enthrall and move us, to this day?  Their commonality is not what "the reader gives to them".

It is what they give to the reader. There is an ineffable core to great poetry that strikes an echoing chord on the cultural mainspring, the fundamental centre of what makes us human and that we lose in the hustle of ordinary surface life.  We _must _do that, we have children to feed, clothes and goods to acquire, places to go, tasks to perform, all essential to live a life.  In the process we lose touch with our core.  Wordsworth: "getting and spending/we lay waste our Powers".  Yeats: "things fall apart/the centre cannot hold/the blood-dimm'd tide is loosed/and every where the ceremony of innocence is drowned." William Carlos Williams "so much depends" upon opening our eyes to the unadorned beauty in simple things.  Poets have been revered since the invention of pictograms as a form of writing. Through language, they touch that ineffable core at the centre of the human condition and offer it to us.  Define it? "get with child a Mandrake root" invites Donne.  Poets are prepared to live with "mysteries and half-doubts", declares Keats, and Shakespeare's Theseus describes the process so well:

the poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling
doth glance from heaven to earth
from earth to heaven,
and as the imagination bodies forth
the forms of things unknown
the poet's pen turns them to shapes
and gives to airy nothing
a local habitation, and a name

We have never succeeded in defining a poem.  Interestingly, we are downright glib about defining prose: "prose is the use of words and conventional notational devices (punctuation etc) in patterns acceptable within a given language (grammar etc) to clearly describe, depict, and/or record information and related conceptual details such that it can be read and understood by another user of that language."  That definition encompasses the Annual Report of AT & T, the descriptive sections of the specifications for manufacturing a PRB 21 Hydraulic Crane, and the short stories of Jack London.  It does not encompass the aesthetic qualities of London's stories.  That's a topic for another thread.

Now, if you're saying at this point, "what a crock of bullshit! I've laboured thru this expecting SOMETHING on the subject of poetic prose and prose poems and all I've got is a bunch of airy-fairy crap about how mysterious poetry is.  What a fucking waste of my time!"  There!  You didn't even have to _think!  _I did it all for you.  But such a nasty dulled-out response will apply to very few reading this post.  Most of you are going to consider the points I've raised.  Even those of you who disagree with me, will at minimum consider the points I've raised.  And some of you will go back and re-read the two posts by RH Peat.  And that would be A Good Thing.

Oh! just by the way, this post might come a little closer to addressing the Thread Question than might be immediately apparent.


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## Kevin (Aug 7, 2017)

Art forms are always in motion. While history is great, boundaries, all of them, are being pushed and broken. Like it, or don't like it, they will continue to be broken as forms stagnate and die. Dinosaurs are neat to look at, great, fantastical creatures; masterpieces of nature, but they are no more relevant than... dinosaurs. And we can't go back, can we, as that would just be nostalgia.


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## RHPeat (Aug 7, 2017)

*For those that give a shit — about culture through the craft of writing. 

*I hear a rumbling in the wilderness as dawn breaks the fog. There is a deaf wall between us that tries to thread a needle yet it is too illusive for bricks to see. Worry not that tide is always rolling in or out even when there is snow on mountain tops.

Give me the poets of the world no matter when he or she lived; I know their beating heart when I feel it. What do the contemporary know about liberty and Adolf when culture and civilization were truly contrived and stagnant with a bayonet and the muzzle of a rifle shoved into the poet’s face. Or his twin brother Pol Pot in Asia and his killing fields, that killed just as many. Those fields began by the killing anyone that was a teacher or a monk. Let's get down on reality where the blood soaked earth is marked by those the loved literature. Let's find Lorca's unmarked grave and give praise for a poet who knew how to sing out his words.

Give me all the poets that ever lived, and forget about the half burnt baked beans still in the can. I'll gladly listen to Yeats or Keats, Jerffers or Ferlinghetti, to Joyce or Dylan Thomas any day of the week. Give me Tagore and Whitman, Wallace Stevens and Pound, Tennyson and Bob Kaufman, Marianne Moore and Emily I want them all beside my bread pudding with the morning milk of the ages. Even Lu Chi and Li Po, Richard Wilbur and Robert Creeley. Every last word that strikes a cord in my ever-lasting soul; I want to feel them ringing my bones as their precious bell of words striking me deeply. I WANT TO HEAR IT ALL. 

The arts are what makes any culture rich throughout all time, and not just tomorrow. I want all their voices. Tomorrow comes no matter what the cost, just add it all to the rest of the multitude of singing voices. It's "the innumerable caravan which moves/ to that mysterious realm in Bryant's thanatopsis. Art lives it doesn't die. I cherish it all form the first day that man had enough brains to write it all down. I don't want some narrow vision in isolation that's lost in a single time frame of the present, I want the complete spectrum, all the way from Gilgamesh right into the distant future. Every last word of it. 

The beginning of the written word as art is literacy and personal voice. The written language was created for poets. Let the poets sing their songs loud and endlessly.

Let Them Sing Like Birds

Let me hear the nightingale's song once more,
just before dawn. Let me hear the robin & the jay
rattle their curses in the live-oaks at noon.
I love to listen to the crows in the cornfield,
and the magpies in the Walnut trees.

Let the woodpecker tap me out a rhythm,
send me dancing down the cobble stones
as I move beneath his bright winged hours.
Let the quail pierce the air like an ice-pick!
I listen for the lies through the mocking bird,
and trembling golden tones by wild canaries.

I want to dream the way the whippoorwill
sings its lonely heart out at dusk.
I long to listen for the great horned owl's
too-whoo-it-hoot in the deep moonless night
as wind-shivered twigs undress the stars.
I long to feel their songs down in my bones.

© RH Peat 4/11/2009


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## clark (Aug 7, 2017)

Ron -- I have sent you a PM asking for confirmation that your post immediately above is indeed a response to my post #53.  Just wanted to make sure, before I responded.


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## RHPeat (Aug 7, 2017)

Clark 

The statement is no longer directed toward anything you had to say at all. If you want it edited further just let me know. 

a poet friend
RH Peat


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## Firemajic (Aug 7, 2017)

RHPeat said:


> *For those that give a shit — about culture through the craft of writing.
> 
> *I hear a rumbling in the wilderness as dawn breaks the fog. There is a deaf wall between us that tries to thread a needle yet it is too illusive for bricks to see. Worry not that tide is always rolling in or out even when there is snow on mountain tops.
> 
> ...





With all due respect, I do not want to sound like Poe, Keats, Tennyson ect... yes, they were and still are fabulous poets... I want to find my own way, my own voice, keep my own originality... draw from my own passion and life's experience... excuse me if my poetry does not fit into the rigid guidelines...pardon my faux pas if my poetry shows emotion and lacks the basic bones of a metaphor... what you and Clark have expressed here has not only discouraged me as a poet [ well maybe I don't have the right to call myself a poet] but you have caused me to feel inept, stupid and irrelevant ....


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## Firemajic (Aug 7, 2017)

OOoo, one more thing... I truly love your poem, RHPeat, it is unique and lyrically beautiful, I wish my Grandmam could have read it, she would have loved it... even though she did not finish grade 6 and was uneducated ... she could read, and she is the one who instilled in me my passion for poetry...


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## clark (Aug 7, 2017)

KEVIN -- Your 'Dinosaur' post is either a joke or.....just hang on a minute!  It's on the public boards, so I'll just copy it here for easy reference.  You wrote--

Art forms are always in motion. While history is great, boundaries, all of them, are being pushed and broken. Like it, or don't like it, they will continue to be broken as forms stagnate and die. Dinosaurs are neat to look at, great, fantastical creatures; masterpieces of nature, but they are no more relevant than... dinosaurs. And we can't go back, can we, as that would just be nostalgia.

I'm pretty sure your post is in response to my post #53, immediately above yours, yes?. My dear fellow--what are you talking about?  My post has NOTHING to do with 'forms' in history, Art, or anything else. It has NOTHING to do with putting some sort of moribund  literary 'form' (or 'something' ?) on life-support, when it should be permitted to "stagnate and die."  And it says NOTHING about "going back" anywhere. . .and there is NOTHING even remotely "nostalgic" about it.  So I'm forced to conclude that you're being rather obscurely humorous, or. . .other conclusions elude me.

Maybe your post wasn't in response to mine at all.


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## RHPeat (Aug 7, 2017)

Firemajic said:


> With all due respect, I do not want to sound like Poe, Keats, Tennyson ect... yes, they were and still are fabulous poets... I want to find my own way, my own voice, keep my own originality... draw from my own passion and life's experience... excuse me if my poetry does not fit into the rigid guidelines...pardon my faux pas if my poetry shows emotion and lacks the basic bones of a metaphor... what you and Clark have expressed here has not only discouraged me as a poet [ well maybe I don't have the right to call myself a poet] but you have caused me to feel inept, stupid and irrelevant ....



Firemajic

Can't we do all these things without erasing all the others that came before us; including your own grandmother? Has grandmothers words stopped you from becoming who you are? Do we have to live in something that no one has seen before to feel we have ownership of ourselves? How ridiculous. 

What I am saying, (let clark speak for himself, he has his own ideas), is that we are still connected to the beyond through our human experience as culture. Poetry is one of the humanities, It infers culture as creative literature as the written word. That's the root of the word "Poeta" in Latin. 

I most certainly didn't say you had to like who I liked. I named who I liked, I said: "give them to me." what have you read in the world of literature that you like is the bigger question? Did you read "Alice in Wonderland" "Catcher In The Rye" "Huck Fin". Are you saying we should burn all these books and deny that they ever existed because they are part of history? I'm dreadfully sorry, I can't do that and still have the impetus to write. For those writers instilled the want to write in me. This gives me the desire to write the language that is inspired inside of myself. 

That I too have the desire to write. You are misconstruing the intent in what I have written to suit a single ego, as an individual person, instead of seeing humanity as the greater good in the past, present & future. There are still many more writers in the future to come due to what is written today, and I say so in my statement, if you care to reread it. For realize that the story of Gilgamesh is the oldest know story on the planet, and I want it all from that day forward into the distant future, which allows you to be who you are as the poet. "that's right I'm talking about what you write as well, my gift to you by being inclusive rather than exclusive in my statement. 

That's what culture means, that's what it offers more to all readers not just the selfish poets with their worry about being unique. It beats me how anyone can think that they can find something they think is lost; when in fact  they already possess it. We are each unique on the planet just as every blade of grass and every apple seed or drop of water. We don't need to prove this to anyone; it is obvious. Poetry has always been inclusive and not exclusive as I see it, for it deals with the universal questions of life and death which we all experience. 

That's why someone of the past still talks to me as much as my own contemporaries. To reject any part of literature starts with creating a new alphabet and a new language and by controlling all the known language oriented media. To me that sounds like a totalitarian or fascist state — it is exclusive for the few. By seeing ourselves as a whole, we are all tied together through world culture. It even effects the clothes we wear and the tooth brush we use to brush our teeth. 

Tossing the history of human existence is self sacrifice. It suggests that we as poets should buy ourselves a gun instead of pen to write with and shoot the nearest person before they learn to write. The written word is history. This includes our own family, parents and children. Were you not read to as a child? Did you not read to your children? You should have burned those books by the way you talk they are history. It's all out there the written word is everywhere. Walk down any street and signs are plastered everywhere. We even name the streets to be able to move around and know where we are. NO! I want it all; right back to the beginning of the written word, for that's where it all began. Without that I wouldn't be reading anything at all. And you wouldn't have any desire to write anything either because language would still be grunting noises and pointing. 

What we miss when be deny the past is what brought us to the present. And the present is part of the past and the future. It's not something that stops and starts; it continues as a whole. Think about this denying the past is denying your own memories. Even Kevin's statement speaks of the continuum as he tries to negate the past. Which is ludicrous because it is part of the present, is he still wearing animal skins without buttons? Is he hand sewing his shoes? Does he use a fork when he eats? Does he use toilet paper? I see no difference in reading literature of the past than accepting the known world of today as part of that past in every way possible including the computers that allow us to talk right here in the present moment. 

Gilgamesh's love for Enkdu as a friend is just important today as it was then in 2700 BC. That story is just alive for me today as the book I read the other day called "The Rag And Bone Shop Of The Heart/ a poetry anthology" edited by the 3 contemporary poets Bly, Hilman and Meade. I don't find one, separated from the other, inside of me, for I read them both. What a gift it is to hear Gilgamesh tell his story from 2700 BC. And to find out that the heroic journey was taking place then as it does today. Are we really that different as humans on the planet? I find that worth pondering as a poet. But do I have to kill my friend to find out how much I love him? Another thing to ponder; when their are so many divorces in the modern day world. So the past is directly connected to the present when we question the story. As any story is connected to us when we read it. Time has nothing to do with literary potential as an art form at all. It's about what takes place within us as the gift of the writer that is important and not the time when it was written. 

I agree with Clark; he states it all right here: "To this day:  Their commonality is not what "the reader gives to them". It is what they give to the reader". Which is the actual impetus to read and write for all of us. To cherish the language for all it can be and what it can offer us, without denying any of it, right back to Gilgamesh, the first known written story. It's still there for anyone one on the planet to read, (if they want to). Personally I'm thankful that it was written down. Did the scribe realize what that written word meant through all of time beyond even our present moment moving into the future. It is a remarkable event that you never heard about it school at all, yet it has changed your life in so many ways you couldn't begin to count them. 

I realize everyone's desires are different. And I'm also quite willing to let them make their own choices without trying to form a fascist or totalitarian state of mind while reading or writing what I like. I want the same respect. I think the inclusiveness that I speak about here is of vital importance to all poets, world wide. That the concern of all the humanities is the act of creating art, and it is inclusive and not exclusive to the greater human experience through all time. For time has little or nothing to do with any of it. Art is about what takes place inside us, are we moved by its presentation. 

It's really no different than saying that someone who speaks a foreign language aren't important. "did you see that from the inside out"? Think about it. Is it *inclusive* of the human experience? Or is it exclusive of others? Are we to exclude the word of dead because they no longer live; or should we include the dead because they left us their voice as something that lives; that their experience can change who we are through their artistic efforts. Is a Van Gogh painting less valuable because he is dead; to the contrary, it becomes more valuable because there are no more of them left. It's no different with literature, except for the fact that it can be put into print. Art remains art throughout all time because of its potential to move the emotions of others. 

a poet friend
RH Peat


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## clark (Aug 7, 2017)

KEVIN -- Your 'Dinosaur' post is either a joke or.....just hang on a minute!  It's on the public boards, so I'll just copy it here for easy reference.  You wrote--

Art forms are always in motion. While history is great, boundaries, all of them, are being pushed and broken. Like it, or don't like it, they will continue to be broken as forms stagnate and die. Dinosaurs are neat to look at, great, fantastical creatures; masterpieces of nature, but they are no more relevant than... dinosaurs. And we can't go back, can we, as that would just be nostalgia.

I'm pretty sure your post is in response to my post #53, immediately above yours, yes?. My dear fellow--what are you talking about?  My post has NOTHING to do with 'forms' in history, Art, or anything else. It has NOTHING to do with putting some sort of moribund  literary 'form' (or 'something' ?) on life-support, when it should be permitted to "stagnate and die."  And it says NOTHING about "going back" anywhere. . .and there is NOTHING even remotely "nostalgic" about it.  So I'm forced to conclude that you're being rather obscurely humorous, or. . .other conclusions simply elude me.

Your post seems completely _non sequitur. ._ .to my post, at any rate.  If you care to explain what you're referring to, we might be able to carry on the conversation_._


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## Firemajic (Aug 7, 2017)

RHPeat said:


> Firemajic
> 
> ******Can't we do all these things without erasing all the others that came before us; including your own grandmother? Has grandmothers words stopped you from becoming who you are? Do we have to live in twig and mud houses again to feel we have ownership of ourselves? How ridiculous. *****
> 
> ...





LMAO, well you and I have a lot in common, RHPeat... we both love and respect the poets of the past, those are the ones my Grandmam read to me... we both are passionate about poetry, and about the beauty of the language... I am a tiny bit emotional today... see, I told you I am all about the emotion  and I do apologize if I sounded disrespectful of your thoughts and opinions... there is never a good excuse to be rude.. I think we both went off the rails here.. anyway, thank you for sharing your thoughts...


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## clark (Aug 7, 2017)

FIREMAJIC--It is personally deeply distressing to me that any piece I have written might elicit this response from any fellow poet:" what. . . Clark [has] expressed here has not only discouraged me as a poet. . . but [he has] caused me to feel inept, stupid and irrelevant", especially a poet like you, who has established herself in my awareness as someone dedicated to the art and to improving her contribution to it.  Yes, I was annoyed in part of my post at some previous cynical and ill-informed posts on this thread.  And I let that annoyance show.  As is my right. . .as it is the right of anyone else on this forum to come back at me, all guns blazing.  Such is the nature of conversation that matters.  You cannot seriously believe that YOU were included in my negative comments towards negative posts!

The only other factor in my post that might have been (very seriously) misunderstood was where I listed off a number of poets whom we still read avidly and who, in their own way, seized the enigmatic gold ring which is part of the very tissue of the human experience.  What IS that?  It is a mystery.  It is a mystery that all poets accept and which we all strive for in our dedication to this ART.  But I never suggested for a moment, Firemajic, that they'd done it all, that the book was now closed, that we could never achieve what they achieved!  Have you ever--I know you have--written a poem or created an image or had a sudden insight that you felt like a _physical _"jolt?  That you could never explain rationally with a cocked gun to your head?  A poet ACCEPTS that.  And now and again actually succeeds in welding "it" into language.  That's what it's all about.  That's what I was trying to express.  And it's as available to you as it was to John Keats.

Stodgy old Alexander Pope summed "it" up beautifully in one superb couplet (not that in the 18th-centrue, the word "wit" meant "penetrating insight and understanding" and capitalized "Nature" meant "the deepest and most abiding aspects of the human experience".  Pope wrote:

True Wit is Nature to advantage dressed--
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well-expressed

It is said "there is nothing new under the sun". . .and surely that is true.  Out daily worries, concerns, hopes, aspirations, fears, etc. AND the centre of all our Art, revolves around these great 'themes': BIRTH, DEATH, REBIRTH, LOVE, HATE, PEACE, COMPASSION, CONFLICT, and JUSTICE.  All of these great themes were the themes of the characters in The Epic of Gilgamesh, and one way or the other, they are the concerns of a port called Firemajic.  The JOB is to find and express YOUR VOICE ("but ne'er so well-expressed") for you and through you for your culture.  Not for an instant would I ever suggest you or any other modern poet should try to write like Tennyson or Charles Bukowski or Ronald Peat.  You and your voice are unique, part of a cultural thread that stretches back thousands of years, but is also NOW and that is where the poet must focus.  Tennyson's Ulysses puts it rather well:

I am a part of all that I have met; 

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro' 

Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades 

For ever and forever when I move. 

How dull it is to pause, to make an end, 

To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use! 

As tho' to breathe were life! 

And a little later in the same poem, Ulysses (metaphorically, 'the poet') declares his sense of his quest:


To follow knowledge like a sinking star, 

Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. 

I could not write like Tennyson, nor would I want to try.  And I would never suggest to any colleague that they should either.  But their voices spoke wisely for their time, and we can and should use them to help us (YOU)find our ()  own. . . . . . . "but ne'er so well-expressed.".


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## Firemajic (Aug 7, 2017)

Dear Clark, please do not be distressed, I am so sorry, truly... I guess it was the "TONE" of your and RHPeat's post that upset me.. I think the word "ignorant" was used, and several other belittling phrases.... I thought "damn" what the hell"... I mean this IS a discussion, and we should be free to discuss our POV without ridicule... and yeah, I guess my insecurities as a writer are showing, my new meds are messing with my mind and causing MORE chaos in my head, so I have hit the wall with my poetry. I do always want to learn and improve, but I don't like rulzs and stuff like that, I don't want to feel like I have to meet a certain criteria and fit in a mundane box, before I have the right to call myself a poet... sooooo, anyway, I am sorry I upset you, I did not mean to be rude, and yeah, this is going to sound like a cop out... but I am not myself today... I am not sure who I am... but I know who I am not... I aint Poe or Frost or Yeats... I am just one emotional person who's passion is poetry... hahaaa... Peace... ....?


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## RHPeat (Aug 7, 2017)

Firemajic

I saw what you were saying as an extension of many other things. That by saying one simple thought it actually becomes connected to the greater whole of the humanities and what they are concerned about as a whole rather than just the specifics of poetry alone. Part of my statement came from the complete thread and another came from Kevin's statement about the past being opposed to the future. That there is an effort to rejecting that past to maintain identity. 

The weakness in this statement for me is that we don't have to maintain who we really are at all. It is obvious by what we choose to write and do. That it is inherent within us. We just need to identify it as our own voice. Your statement followed that statement telling me you wanted to find yourself outside of others that I presented. I connected the two unconsciously. They are similar in approach and deal with some of the same extended things concerning the self and how we all are connected to past, present and future as one thing. I was never suggesting that you should become them. But I did suggest to read them. It would difficult to even try to become them such a thing is out of the question; they all have their own recognizable voice. There's nothing worse than a poor imitation of the real thing anyway. If you are being yourself you don't have to worry about such things. Your own voice just arrives. 

But in reality we are each vary unique. We start to lose that when we try to be something different, as "trying to become unique" moves us away from what is unique within ourselves. We can't find what we never lost. We just have to be ourselves which is the most unique thing out there. We own it, and we were it. Learning to live with it at times can be very difficult, but we are who we are. One of a kind we exist along with a world of others in the same fishing boat floating in space. 

We all have similar experiences outwardly as humans on the planet. So we can have empathy for each other. We all feel the pathos of being alive as well as the ecstasy of the moment and the grief of death. (the pain and joy can fall on top of us in the human experience.) It is our more complex feelings that draw us into deeper thoughts. As poets we seek to share these experience by placing another into them through what we write. We don't dump our emotions on readers as writers; we seek instead to allow another to feel them through our unique presentation to evoke those feelings. So we draw on our personal feeling as our impetus while not telling these feelings to the reader so that the reader can actually have our experiences for themselves. That takes craft to do that to another to pull the reader into the poem.  

We allow them to take the gift of the poem for themselves to have. We are giving them ownership of the poem as they read or ponder the poem. This is ART, and what I was talking about as the humanities that extend into everything else out there; how past, present, and future is connected to everything out there including wanting to be that individual you are. But even the self isn't stationary, we are in motion as well. 

We don't experience the world as a singularity at all as a single moment in time. This is why the heightened language of the poem is so sensuous to the reader; they are being pointed in the direct that the poem is suggesting as the path through the text to have our experience. It is theirs and not ours in that epiphany or realization. They literally put themselves into the poem/ and that's the real art of writing. Moving the other into our experience as theirs. 

This is why everything has been written is an extension of all human experience and should be respected as such. But like you said you know this from Grandmam reading you those historical poems and allowing you to see that beauty in life at an early age. I bet anything that's big part of what made you a poet. It is for me as well. My pop read poems to me and my grandmother recited poems form memory in her 70's and older. I can remember Bryant's "waterfowl" delivered in a trembling old voice as if she were just a girl. 

a poet friend
RH Peat


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## Kevin (Aug 8, 2017)

clark said:


> KEVIN -- Your 'Dinosaur' post is either a joke or.....just hang on a minute!  It's on the public boards, so I'll just copy it here for easy reference.  You wrote--
> 
> Art forms are always in motion. While history is great, boundaries, all of them, are being pushed and broken. Like it, or don't like it, they will continue to be broken as forms stagnate and die. Dinosaurs are neat to look at, great, fantastical creatures; masterpieces of nature, but they are no more relevant than... dinosaurs. And we can't go back, can we, as that would just be nostalgia.
> 
> ...


Blatant idiocy... Shit spreaders... why in the world would I want to have a conversation with you? Non sequitur... Hmm. Who was it raised all the names of the dead/no further explanation given? .. What was I to think?_ Be like them.._.if that isn't nostalgia then I don't know what is. And apparently I wasn't the only one.  Somewhere I think I saw the term 'anarchists' thrown in. Is that a pejorative, because it sounded like one? In my mind here are two opposites: anarchist/fascist.  Your capitalized repetition above is about all else I could gather. I did try. I went back and read the other posts as directed.  So yes, dig up the dinosaurs of poetry was what I got out it. Oh, and "we're smart, while the rest are you are not." Great way to start things off.


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## Pete_C (Aug 8, 2017)

Ah, the old prose/poetry cycle is still churning away! It's refreshing to see that us versifiers and dabblers with meter still find a need to fiercely debate what it is we actually do! There's always the two camps: those who invoke the rules of dead men (and women, of course) and those who believe that the sons should not be held accountable for the sins of their fathers.

Of course, nothing changes. The debate is not ours to have, nor does it have any conclusion. We simply do what we do, creating structures of words, hoping that someone, somewhere will view them with a modicum of value. If those readers then want to put them in the prose box or the poetry box, or even the prose-poetry box, good for them. Who are to dictate why others would give their time (and on occasions their money) to immerse themselves in something we have created.

If writing to a formula or a dead man's rules are what floats your boat, then do just that. If taking a side-swipe at convention is for you, happy days. Ultimately, surely what marks our purpose is the hope that someone out there, someone we'll probably never meet, takes something positive away from our scribblings.

I once knew a man who painted. He painted pictures of horses. He loved the things. The problem was they looked like cows. We stopped telling him because he'd fly into a rage and we'd be close to wetting ourselves laughing at him. There's only so many times a grown man can wet himself. An arts centre near us held an exhibition and he put forward a painting. Everything was available for sale, and the best canvases were priced at around £150 (this was the early 1980s so that was a lot). In order to have the highest perceived value he priced his work at £500. He didn't expect any interest so it mattered not. However, someone offered a remarkable £450 for the 'cow' picture. He refused to sell on a point of principle. I thought he was an arsehole.

Let the reader call what I do poetry, let them call call it prose, or even prose-poetry. I care not. It's their prerogative.


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## haribol (Aug 8, 2017)

Firemajic said:


> Dear Clark, please do not be distressed, I am so sorry, truly... I guess it was the "TONE" of your and RHPeat's post that upset me.. I think the word "ignorant" was used, and several other belittling phrases.... I thought "damn" what the hell"... I mean this IS a discussion, and we should be free to discuss our POV without ridicule... and yeah, I guess my insecurities as a writer are showing, my new meds are messing with my mind and causing MORE chaos in my head, so I have hit the wall with my poetry. I do always want to learn and improve, but I don't like rulzs and stuff like that, I don't want to feel like I have to meet a certain criteria and fit in a mundane box, before I have the right to call myself a poet... sooooo, anyway, I am sorry I upset you, I did not mean to be rude, and yeah, this is going to sound like a cop out... but I am not myself today... I am not sure who I am... but I know who I am not... I aint Poe or Frost or Yeats... I am just one emotional person who's passion is poetry... hahaaa... Peace... ....?



These ideas match mine and as a poet, though not technically sound, I consider myself a poet notwithstanding the fact that I am far and far from the realm of great and successful poets and the criteria set for writing poetry by specialists. I write because my heart wants it. Poetry for me is to  express something the poet wants to say powerfully and that is why the beauty of expressing an idea through poems is more and more obvious. And the idea set forth by poetry is more impressive and powerful


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## haribol (Aug 8, 2017)

Poetry is usually more poignant, and it's flow is more powerful. Why  people from the time immemorial chose to express their thoughts through poetry is it is a heightened form of art and when one, a writer,  reaches a state of maturing he chooses poetry as a means of expression and that is why there are meters, rhythms and the like in poetry and one has to hone the skill of writing poetry.


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## Darkkin (Aug 8, 2017)

clark said:


> My goodness!  There's quite a number of stylistically skilful shit-spreaders eagerly (and at length) contributing lavish swaths of their product-of-choice to this thread, aren't there?  Playing Devil's Advocate is a wonderful strategy to avoid _engaging _a subject of discussion, the available fall-back always there:  "Whoa now!  that wasn't _me! _I was just playing a role to encourage_ you _to do all the thinking and hard work this topic demands." Then there's the dismissive self-styled comedian who announces that he grabbed a few lines of something he just dashed off, and submitted it to a poetry contest and did very well.  Message? _"__Lookit me!  Lookit me!  Lookit the plum on the end of my thumb!" _But the straw that prompted me to write this post is the corker nearby, to the effect that a poem's "value" resides in what "the reader *gives *to it."  I'm going to assume the author of that throwaway remark did so in haste, just wasn't thinking, just flung it out there because he'd heard somewhere that 'beauty was in the eye of the beholder' and it sounded ok so, what the hell!. . .toss it in the ring.
> 
> How else to account for such blatant idiocy?
> 
> ...




If one is looking for an example of profound prosing this is it.  (Yes, it is a verb too, but not in a good way!)  Because apparently, all others who replied are blatant idiots...Hmm.  Not really a good way to argue a point.  All it does is cement the enormity of one's comtempt for any other poet/writers' perspectives.  If it isn't done just this way, in an overt, moribund fashion it isn't poetry and the writer's idea is moot.  Sorry, but if that is what defines poets of the modern era, I really don't want to have anything to do with it.  Talk about an incentive for not writing, being called an idiot for not thinking, well, there are few better ways to discourage writers to attempt a medium that is already tough.  As only a couple of members have such profound understand as to quantify the definition of poetry and all it entails, I wonder why others seek to attempt to contribute as we (as a forum and writers) have been lumped into the ignorant peons category.  Sort of defeats the purpose of 'discussion'...

Apparently, all thoughts and ideas submitted prior to the quoted post are negated by one fixed definition.  (Akin to Denathor on his throne at Minas Tirith, a fixed perspective sneering down on all others, while Faramir a much faulted younger son, unworthy by Denathor's standards was much more in tune with pertinent circumstances.  Theory to practice.  Character archetypes)  I'm sorry, but poetry and prose, all writing is a process.  It cannot be defined or limited by the ideals and perspective of an individual.  To assume as much does disservice not only to the creative process, but all those who attempt to actually create something, as well.

One critical aspect that has been overlooked is the intentions of the writer.  It is a responsibility that is essential to the medium.  When one writes, poetry in particular, one needs to be conscious of what one is doing.  And too often, writers don't take time to consider that facet of the craft.

A conversation between Frodo and Gandalf discussing Gollum from LOTR springs to mind:

Frodo:  'It is a pity Bilbo didn't kill him when he had the chance.'

Gandalf:  'Pity?  It was pity that stayed Bilbo's hand.  Do not be so free to dole out death and judgement.  Many who deserve death, live and some who deserve life, perish.  Can you give it to them, Frodo?'

No single individual has the power to define an entire genre and all of its manifold facets.  To discard a thought simply because it doesn't go into profound, stultifying detail doesn't foster curiousity, it destorys it.  And insight, no matter how thorough, if presented with all the tact and interest of a brick will leave little impact.  If the reader becomes bored, they are going to skim or skip the information entirely.  In essence, the information may as well be falling on deaf ears for all the attention its pertent points will receive.  The trick of poetry and prose, getting the reader to actually read.

The above quoted text is one of the best examples of reader alienation I've happened across, yet I don't know which is worse 'Because I said so logic' or the 'My word is all' approach.  Both are extremes points on the scales.  One side unwilling to learn the other unwilling to consider anything, but of the two I know which is more damaging.  As readers, we know there is a difference between poetry and prose.  The parameters stemming from word choice, visual aspects, and the writer's intentions.  Many readers have enough sense to know one from the other and if a piece is carelessly written.

Conscious writing determines a piece's identity.  Consider, as a reader would you pay more attention to Mr. Collins (_Pride and Prejudice)_ or Stephen Fry (_The Ode Less Travelled_)?   (It is amazing the books one can find on an idiot's bookcase.  And yes, they have been read.    ).  Mr. Collins has profound intentions and verbiage, but his approach sends people scurrying, whereas Stephen Fry draws the readers and viewers to him through an endearing charm.  If Mr. Collins is, indeed, the future of poetry, I'm thinking it might be time to return to my prose roots...Having encountered teachers with the Mr. Collins method, I have to say it is something I avoid, (people who treat others like they are a waste of time and space).

In all honesty, it is posts like the one above that leave writers feeling like poetry is impossible.  And all the theory and knowledge in the world means exactly jack shit if execution on a practical standpoint fails.  Like explaining how to play a violin and having no talent whatsoever.  Some writers can 'write by (play it by) ear.'  For those who can and do, the practical aspects count for much more than simple theory...One doesn't have to be part of an elite clique to write poetry, nor is an MFA or PhD. part of the requisite criteria.

If a writer is clear with their intentions and the ideas are clear to readers then the writing, be it poetry or prose, has done its job.  And from a writer's standpoint I think it is more important to have a clear voice of one's own than attempt to present material that is a pale imitation of established classics.  Language is constantly evolving and for the first time in decades poetry books are making it onto the bestsellers.  Does it rank high in literary merit, not really, but it gets people actually reading and considering poetry.  (A foot in the door).  The classic poets, as a result, are gaining exposure through proximity, a phenomenon that does not happen in standard prose (fiction and nonfiction).  It is a benefit of poetry's unique parameters.

Writers have a right to be as highminded as they like, but it doesn't make their perspective and insights the absolute.  The Sith, Voldemort and his Death Eaters exemplify what can happens with an elitist mindset.  It benefits no one and harms multitudes...The parallels are found all across literature, both poetry and prose.  And I know it is only poetry, but voice and tone translate across mediums, as well.  (Universal themes and archetypes...It is part of the reason Harry Potter has such wide spread appeal.)  So to be an idiot with an idea and an open mind or a fixed, singular perspective...The choice is in the hands of the individual.  Consider too, the audience that threads like this reach.  Many members are amateurs, dabblers, and weekend writers.  We don't sit and expound on the philosophy and profoundity of the difference between prose and poetry, and for that we don't seem to be worthy of having a thought on the idea.

A couple of fairly current authors who do well with both poetry and prose, Mary Oliver and Charles Bukowski.  Good reads for the layman and the learned.  And one book that just came out, _Beren and Luthien_.  It is Tolkien's poem that was the basis for his _Silmarillion_.  You want poetry blooming into prose, it is a prime example.

But being a blatantly idiotic shitslinger, this post probably has little relevance because it isn't up to the standards of an elite few.  It is from the perspective of a writer who works in a bookstore and conversations with readers.  Practice, not theory.  And while I know I'm no expert on the subject, I do know this much:  If a reader remembers your work you must be doing something right.  Oddly enough people remember my work..._The Strangeways to Nowhere_.  Something about it stays with people and my commission base for the nonsense is growing.  There is something about creatures like the Star Socks Fox that would never flow as prose.  It is too improbable, but as a rhymed verse, well...It strikes a chord with readers.

To close an observation from pragmatic, worthy Samwise Gamgee:

*"It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end… because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing… this shadow. Even darkness must pass.”*

Be it poetry or prose, if it stays with the reader then the writing has proven its worth.  Poetry has the power to concentrate ideas and themes, leaving enough ambiguity for a reader's curiosity, whereas prose expounds, illustrates, and often explains.the same themes and ideas.  It delineates an idea but in much greater detail.  Dish soap into actual bubbles.  Now getting the bubbles transformed into concentrate soap, that takes a bit of thought...

pluck indigo from a prism's grasp, 
bind it round, distilled and bright
in a prison cast of fluted glass


One analogy two forms.  Syntax and word order that works with the stanza format would be utterly idiotic by a prose standard.  Poetry imbues it with an amorphous, inherent touch of whimsy.  Simple?  Very, but it illustrates the point of conscious word choice and context with mediums.

 Also, what criteria are now requisite if a reader wants to reply to a basic discussion thread?  Given certain responses it would help to know the expected parameters.  Are laymen allowed to reply?  Because it certainly doesn't seem so...(No point in bothering.)


- D. the T.


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## clark (Aug 9, 2017)

Darkkin -- Your post suggests a skim-and-key-word read of my post. The quote you isolate refers to two specific posts.  If you place yourself in either of those camps, well then you place yourself in one of those camps. The critical parts of my post in no sense apply to all poets nor do I offer an elitist view of poetry, so I have no idea what you're getting at.  But you _did_  get at it at great length.  Lots pf words. . . . .


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## Firemajic (Aug 9, 2017)

RHPeat said:


> Firemajic
> 
> Can't we do all these things without erasing all the others that came before us; including your own grandmother? Has grandmothers words stopped you from becoming who you are? Do we have to live in something that no one has seen before to feel we have ownership of ourselves? How ridiculous.
> 
> ...





clark said:


> Darkkin -- Your post suggests a skim-and-key-word read of my post. The quote you isolate refers to two specific posts.  If you place yourself in either of those camps, well then you place yourself in one of those camps. The critical parts of my post in no sense apply to all poets nor do I offer an elitist view of poetry, so I have no idea what you're getting at.  But you _did_  get at it at great length.  Lots pf words. . . . .





Camps???? and which camp are you talking about... the "blatant idiots" and "shit spreaders" ... that camp? You have ruined what could have been a learning discussion, an honest, RESPECTFUL exchange of creative thoughts and ideas, the next time, please leave your ego in your private group.. a true mentor and teacher, one who is truly passionate about poetry, knows that when you belittle your audience, talk down to them and resort to name calling....you have in fact alienated them...


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## LeeC (Aug 10, 2017)

"_Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods._"  ~ Albert Einstein 

I’m certainly no poet, nor grammarian for that matter, given I think our species spends an inordinate amount of time formulating dogma and pigeonholing, only to have such change from generation to generation. That as opposed to respectful and meaningful communications arising from critical thinking. But that’s only me opining, so take it with a load of salt.

Some time back I looked into what’s called prose poetry, finding numerous conflicting statements re definitive attributes (which I'm not going to get into because it leads to nitpicking).

In looking at examples though, I did find some damn good writing.

One piece in particular stood out, because to me it’s  1 + 1 > 2  writing. Those engaging their mind to really understand what’s written, and knowing my naturalist bent, might see why I find this piece exceptional writing, whatever you label it today. Shouldn’t that be the real point?




*The Prose Poem   -   Poem by Campbell McGrath*​

On the map it is precise and rectilinear as a chessboard, though driving past you would hardly notice it, this boundary line or ragged margin, a shallow swale that cups a simple trickle of water, less rill than rivulet, more gully than dell, a tangled ditch grown up throughout with a fearsome assortment of wildflowers and bracken. There is no fence, though here and there a weathered post asserts a former claim, strands of fallen wire taken by the dust. To the left a cornfield carries into the distance, dips and rises to the blue sky, a rolling plain of green and healthy plants aligned in close order, row upon row upon row. To the right, a field of wheat, a field of hay, young grasses breaking the soil, filling their allotted land with the rich, slow-waving spectacle of their grain. As for the farmers, they are, for the most part, indistinguishable: here the tractor is red, there yellow; here a pair of dirty hands, there a pair of dirty hands. They are cultivators of the soil. They grow crops by pattern, by acre, by foresight, by habit. What corn is to one, wheat is to the other, and though to some eyes the similarities outweigh the differences it would be as unthinkable for the second to commence planting corn as for the first to switch over to wheat. What happens in the gully between them is no concern of theirs, they say, so long as the plough stays out, the weeds stay in the ditch where they belong, though anyone would notice the wind-sewn cornstalks poking up their shaggy ears like young lovers run off into the bushes, and the kinship of these wild grasses with those the farmer cultivates is too obvious to mention, sage and dun-colored stalks hanging their noble heads, hoarding exotic burrs and seeds, and yet it is neither corn nor wheat that truly flourishes there, nor some jackalopian hybrid of the two. What grows in that place is possessed of a beauty all its own, ramshackle and unexpected, even in winter, when the wind hangs icicles from the skeletons of briars and small tracks cross the snow in search of forgotten grain; in the spring the little trickle of water swells to welcome frogs and minnows, a muskrat, a family of turtles, nesting doves in the verdant grass; in summer it is a thoroughfare for raccoons and opossums, field mice, swallows and black birds, migrating egrets, a passing fox; in autumn the geese avoid its abundance, seeking out windrows of toppled stalks, fatter grain more quickly discerned, more easily digested. Of those that travel the local road, few pay that fertile hollow any mind, even those with an eye for what blossoms, vetch and timothy, early forsythia, the fatted calf in the fallow field, the rabbit running for cover, the hawk's descent from the lightning-struck tree. You've passed this way yourself many times, and can tell me, if you would, do the formal fields end where the valley begins, or does everything that surrounds us emerge from its embrace?


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## PiP (Aug 10, 2017)

*Moderator Note: Fellow poets, this thread has wandered off topic and has now become personal. PLEASE, let's all take a deep breath and move on. Any further personal comments will be pulled and a warning may be issued. Please don't make me take action. I understand the passion when discussing poetry - walk away. Take your goat for a walk or whatever.

WE also have a no debate policy.

 If  you are tempted to ignore my warning you do so at your peril.

**Moving on...*


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## Deleted member 56686 (Aug 10, 2017)

I might add that the majority of us here are here to learn. Most of us probably aren't what you would call accomplished writers; I'm certainly not. We can learn a lot from from people like RHPeat and Clark but they need to understand that most of us do not have the background they do and may feel like we're being talked down to. There are quite a few famous writers who did not complete college. Among them are Ray Bradbury, Mark Twain, and Charles Dickens. Link is here https://www.pastemagazine.com/blogs...authors-who-never-graduated-from-college.html

So, I guess what I'm saying is nobody is superior or inferior. In a sense we're all in this together. 


Now, as to the question; What makes prose a poem, I would suggest reading Goethe's Faust. I've always been fascinated with the unusual rhythm of what could be considered prose or poetry. I also have to give Darkkin a plug as well. She considers her work poetry but to me it works very well as prose. In some ways her work reminds me a little of Goethe. Anyhow, I think she brilliantly straddles the line between prose and poetry. I wish I could do that.


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## Olly Buckle (Aug 10, 2017)

I have not studied the concept, but that piece has the attributes I would expect from a piece with the word 'Poem' in its title, Lee

It starts with a simile, 'precise and rectilinear as a chessboard'.

In the initial description, 'a shallow swale that cups a simple trickle of water, less rill than rivulet, more gully than dell, a tangled ditch grown up throughout with a fearsome assortment of wildflowers and bracken.' he phrases it in a way that, for me, reflects the natural, wild and disordered state, and that sort of matching language use contiues.

There is rhythm, and a fair bit of alliteration and consonance.

It makes no definite statement, we don't have a map reference for the place  okay, so you might not in a prose piece, but poetry leaves things much more open, it draws people into thinking, but it does not tell them what to think.

Sorry if I am repeating things allready said, I have not read through the whole thread, and I am no expert on poetry, but to me the general statement, 'poetry is about what is implied and not said, prose is about being clear and explicit' makes some sort of sense. when I look back at what I have written recently something like 'Grass' works, but 'Grounded' doesn't quite hack it, the concept is too explicit. I am probably talking tosh to some degree though, as I say, 'I am no expert'.


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## sas (Aug 10, 2017)

Lee, thank you for what I consider to be an exceptional example of a prose poem. It is enhanced with comparisons, contrasts, and yin & yang. Love it.


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## Kevin (Aug 10, 2017)

sas said:


> Lee, thank you for what I consider to be an exceptional example of a prose poem. It is enhanced with comparisons, contrasts, and yin & yang. Love it.


 I did not find this to be a poem. I'm not saying definitively it is not, but... the parameters in my mind that would differentiate poem to straight prose is that the poem, prose- or not , would include the undefined. I mean this to mean 'that which is not said', not in words in a straightforward manner, while at the same time, those unsaid words _being the actual subject_.


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## clark (Aug 10, 2017)

PiP and Firemajic --(just *clarifying *a couple of points, PiP, nothing 'personal'. 

I apologize for the hyperbolic prose that has caused such an uproar.  I was over the top stylistically. . .but I don't apologize for the substance of what I was saying.  I was reacting to two points-of-view presented forcefully.  They are not of the order of 'fact', at all.  HOW to present a total rejection of another view can be something of a problem.  My audience in this case, Firemajic was thus limited and, you're right, I was not too concerned about whether I alienated them or not.  That isn't very PC, but sometimes it's the way chosen by a writer to express a strongly held opposing view.

PiP--what is the NO DEBATE' policy?

Firemajic--I rather doubt you've seen enough of my teaching style or my dedication to poetry to back up your pronouncements.


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## Cran (Aug 10, 2017)

clark said:


> PiP--what is the NO DEBATE' policy?


It is in-house jargon - a carry-over from previous administrations - which prohibits posts that: 

attack other people for their views rather than addressing those views directly;
demean or belittle another or claim some personal superiority or authority as a right to do so;
continue to push an argument beyond tolerance;
include deliberate inflammatory remarks, flames or baits aimed at anyone;
and other similar breaches of da Rules.

When a discussion descends to shouting or argy bargy, it disrupts the peace and leads to what were laughingly called debates.


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## Firemajic (Aug 13, 2017)

PiP said:


> *Moderator Note: Fellow poets, this thread has wandered off topic and has now become personal. PLEASE, let's all take a deep breath and move on. Any further personal comments will be pulled and a warning may be issued. Please don't make me take action. I understand the passion when discussing poetry - walk away. Take your goat for a walk or whatever.
> 
> WE also have a no debate policy.
> 
> ...





If_* we shadows have offended ,
think but this and all is mended,
that you have but slumbered here
while these visions did appear.
 And this weak and idle theme,
no more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend :
If you pardon,  we will mend:
And, as I am an honest puck,
if we have unearned luck
now to 'scape the serpents tongue,
we will make amends ere long;
Else the puck a liar call;
So, goodnight unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
and Robin shall restore amends.

William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream

*_ sorry, Miss PiP.....


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