Prose Poetry

I remember when I first started taking creative writing classes and the issue of the prose poem would come up...I automatically hated the prose poem. I thought it sounded "too easy." How could that be poetry?

Now that I've studied poetry a lot more, I've grown to love the prose poem. However, I'm not sure if I love the actual poems or if I'm just interested in how it's poetry. I've always been interested in what constitutes something to be considered poetic...or rather, what IS a poem? I think the prose poem so ferociously begs us to ask that very question, and I love that about the prose poem. It makes me think. Lately, I can't stop thinking about it, so I've been doing a little research. Here's what I've amalgamated...these are the highlights.

"The prose poem is a type of poetry characterized by its lack of line breaks. Although the prose poem resembles a short piece of prose, its allegiance to poetry can be seen in the use of rhythms, figures of speech, rhyme, internal rhyme, assonance (repetition of similar vowel sounds), consonance (repetition of similar consonant sounds), and images."

"The Prose Poem, which avoids by degree (but not by kind) various strictly formal devices of rhymed verse, and which emphasizes an approach more naturally consistent with the inward or "associational" turnings of the human psyche--the mind's fondness for dream-like creations of metaphor in particular--seems an ideal vehicle for such sophisticated, psychologically realistic, esthetic aspirations. " - Michael Benedikt

"In any event, having cast the idea of the line-break--sometimes no doubt somewhat reluctantly--behind them, it's as if historically, prose poets were looking for a "center of gravity" to take the place of the line-break; and found it in metaphor! Prose poets, like verse poets, are doubtless driven to do what they do by personal proclivity on the one hand, and on the other by the nature of medium they are working in--and the prose poem medium especially seems to call for a metaphor-based "center of gravity." - Michael Benedikt

OK...So that wasn't much, but what I did find is pretty hefty in itself...a lot to think about, I think. So to top it off...here are some prose poems for your enjoyment. Why are these considered poetry? They are definitely poetic, but are they poems? Hmmmmm....I sound like a teacher.


Bread
- Russell Edson

I like good looking bread. Bread that's willing. The kind of
bread that's found in dreams of hunger.
And so it was that I met such a bread. I had knocked on a
door (I sometimes do that to keep my knuckles in shape), and
a women of huge doughy proportions (she had that unbaked,
unkneaded look) appeared holding a rather good-looking loaf
of bread.
I took a bite and the loaf began to cry . . .


Heroic Moment
- Charles Simic

I went bare-assed into the battle. The President himself
heard of my insolence. I was given a flea-ridden mutt to ride. I
rode in com-pany of crows pleading with them to please
remember me. I had a dollhouse knife between my teeth, the
red plastic pisspot on my head as a helmet.
When she heard the news, my mother caused the Greek
fleet to be deprived of favorable winds on its way to Troy.
Witch, they called her, dirty witch-and she, so pretty, chopping
the onions, laughing and crying over the stew pot.


Both poems were taken from The Prose Poem, An International Journal