Hope ya'll had a fabulous Thanksgiving with the people you care about the most!
K's sister Miko came up from Madison. What a sweetie - she brought us the Little Brittan DVD set! (Collin, you know what I'm talkin bout, right?) Hilarious sketch BBC comedy series. K made an amazing spread of dishes (I stayed out of his way) and we noshed Wednesday clear through though today. Tonkatsu to Turkey, roasted yams with coconut curry sauce, roasted brie with garlic, and everything in-between.
Anywho, reading Best New Poets 2007 anthology (go Jee!, m'boy! go Erin sista!) I came across a poem that was a great read but begged the question, when does a prose poem cross the line to micro-fiction? This one (p. 56 for those of you playing at home) had a multiple paragraphs and a narrative thread. That makes it sudden fiction for me. Or at least got me thinking what standards I set for my own prose poems.
For me, in the absence of line breaks but inhabiting the territory of fiction, a prose poem should lean more toward toward the lyric while inventing it's own craft. Joel Brouwer's 100 word Centuries. Or the 1" x 5" justified rectangles I've been obsessing. Or Francis Ponge's object meditations.
What's your take? Where does a prose poem become sudden fiction, or vice versa?
PS - anyone else a little bored with contributor's notes? (I know Steven S. discussed this a while back.) Best New Poet's contributors' notes read mostly like 40 ways to say you say you have an MFA, followed by where you were most recently published. A few ventured elsewhere. Rebecca L knows how to jazz up a note. No Tell Motel anthologies know too. I'm trying. How about you?
9 hours ago
11 comments:
Little Britain is hilarious, although I must confess to being a bigger fan of The Catherine Tate Show.
see, now I need to discover that one too! thanks collin.
a prose poem should lean more toward toward the lyric while inventing it's own craft.
A poem is what you tell it to be. There is no definition of a prose poem.
ps. I think it's dangerous to spend too much time over thinking what a poem is or isn't. I think this leads to a lack of risk taking in one's own work which leads to boring and predictable poetry. Which, of course, sells very well. Instead of thinking is this prose or poetry I would rather think does this poem take risks? Is it vibrant? Is it dynamic?
That's what I think. Dynamic vs. Static. Just another way of looking at it.
Brent:
I like your thoughts about the prose poem. And of course, RK is also right; it should also be vibrant and dynamic.
But fiction should have those qualities as well. And there is (or should be) a difference between a prose poem and micro-fiction.
thank god i'll never have an MFA. my contributor note will be: Montgomery Maxton, learned from dirt and suffering.
I start with a title, then I decide if it should be a story or a poem. a Prose Poem, to me, is a hybrid of a story and a poem.
I try to make all my prose poems either non-narrative or in some other way unsustainable as a fiction story.
I haven't ever really jazzed up my contributor notes. I figure with my already abnormal writing background with no MFA, I don't really need to.
Should be. Should have. Supposed to be. Supposed to have. A woman in a workshop once told me if you put a line in italics in a poem you have to put italics in the same poem somewhere else. I asked her way. She said it's a rule. I asked her whose rule it was. She said it's a rule that everyone knows. I asked her where it came from. Who made it up in the first place?
Leave it alone. Pay more attention to imagination than what should or should not be. I think imagination is what is lacking in mediocre poetry. Fuck the rules.
Yeah R I agree. Any attempt to define poetry is an academic merry-go-round that's only fun if you enjoy going in circles.
Just curious how other poets think of the difference between these two forms that overlap so greatly.
The question only came to light when I was reading Best New POETS contest anthology and I stumbled across a piece that seemed to me more prose than poetry. The editors thought otherwise. I asked other people's opinions. Moving on.
I am 100 percent with RK on this. I don't want more rules...I want better fucking writing. Period.
My contributor notes rank right up there with backpain and tooth aches - all dull and nagging.
Post a Comment