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stonepicnicking_okapiProse in a Small Space by Rita Dove
It’s supposed to be prose if it runs on and on, isn’t it? All those words, too many to fall into rank and file, stumbling bareassed drunk onto the field reporting for duty, yessir, spilling out as shamelessly as the glut from a megabillion dollar chemical facility, just the amount of glittering effluvium it takes to transport a little girl across a room, beige carpet thick under her oxfords, curtains blowzy with spring — is that the scent of daffodils drifting in?
Daffodils don’t smell but prose doesn’t care. Prose likes to hear itself talk; prose is development and denouement, anticipation hovering near the canapés, lust rampant in the antipasta — e.g., a silver fork fingered sadly as the heroine crumples a linen napkin in her lap to keep from crying out at the sight of Lord Campion’s regal brow inclined tenderly toward the wealthy young widow . . . prose applauds such syntactical dalliances.
Then is it poetry if it’s confined? Trembling along its axis, a flagpole come alive in high wind, flapping its radiant sleeve for attention — Over here! It’s me! — while the white spaces (air, field, early morning silence before the school bell) shape themselves around that one bright seizure . . . and if that’s so what do we have here, a dream or three paragraphs? We have white space too; is this music? As for all the words left out, banging at the gates . . . we could let them in, but where would we go with our orders, our stuttering pride?
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I got this from the Poetry Foundationg website, and the note attached is interesting.
“I owe this poem to a former student who loved writing prose poems so much, I challenged him to prove their usefulness: How could he achieve layered cadences within a chunk of prose? How could a text devoid of line breaks be perceived as poetic? Years later, after cofounding Cue: A Journal of Prose Poetry, this former student invited me to contribute. I took up the gauntlet. What began as a continuation of our good-natured ripostes went from anti-ars poetica to lyric reverie to—surprise—a praise song to the prose poem! Tables flipped, lesson learned. Thank you, Morgan Schuldt.”
—Rita Dove
It’s supposed to be prose if it runs on and on, isn’t it? All those words, too many to fall into rank and file, stumbling bareassed drunk onto the field reporting for duty, yessir, spilling out as shamelessly as the glut from a megabillion dollar chemical facility, just the amount of glittering effluvium it takes to transport a little girl across a room, beige carpet thick under her oxfords, curtains blowzy with spring — is that the scent of daffodils drifting in?
Daffodils don’t smell but prose doesn’t care. Prose likes to hear itself talk; prose is development and denouement, anticipation hovering near the canapés, lust rampant in the antipasta — e.g., a silver fork fingered sadly as the heroine crumples a linen napkin in her lap to keep from crying out at the sight of Lord Campion’s regal brow inclined tenderly toward the wealthy young widow . . . prose applauds such syntactical dalliances.
Then is it poetry if it’s confined? Trembling along its axis, a flagpole come alive in high wind, flapping its radiant sleeve for attention — Over here! It’s me! — while the white spaces (air, field, early morning silence before the school bell) shape themselves around that one bright seizure . . . and if that’s so what do we have here, a dream or three paragraphs? We have white space too; is this music? As for all the words left out, banging at the gates . . . we could let them in, but where would we go with our orders, our stuttering pride?
---
I got this from the Poetry Foundationg website, and the note attached is interesting.
“I owe this poem to a former student who loved writing prose poems so much, I challenged him to prove their usefulness: How could he achieve layered cadences within a chunk of prose? How could a text devoid of line breaks be perceived as poetic? Years later, after cofounding Cue: A Journal of Prose Poetry, this former student invited me to contribute. I took up the gauntlet. What began as a continuation of our good-natured ripostes went from anti-ars poetica to lyric reverie to—surprise—a praise song to the prose poem! Tables flipped, lesson learned. Thank you, Morgan Schuldt.”
—Rita Dove
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Date: 2025-03-28 07:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-03-28 01:20 pm (UTC)