Prose poetry is
poetry
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...
written in
prose
Prose is a form of written or spoken language that follows the natural flow of speech, uses a language's ordinary grammatical structures, or follows the conventions of formal academic writing. It differs from most traditional poetry, where the f ...
form instead of
verse form, while preserving poetic qualities such as heightened
imagery
Imagery is visual symbolism, or figurative language that evokes a mental image or other kinds of sense impressions, especially in a literary work, but also in other activities such as psychotherapy.
Forms
There are five major types of sensory im ...
,
parataxis, and emotional effects.
Characteristics
Prose poetry is written as
prose
Prose is a form of written or spoken language that follows the natural flow of speech, uses a language's ordinary grammatical structures, or follows the conventions of formal academic writing. It differs from most traditional poetry, where the f ...
, without the line breaks associated with poetry. However, it makes use of poetic devices such as fragmentation, compression,
repetition
Repetition may refer to:
* Repetition (rhetorical device), repeating a word within a short space of words
*Repetition (bodybuilding), a single cycle of lifting and lowering a weight in strength training
*Working title for the 1985 slasher film '' ...
, rhyme,
metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide (or obscure) clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are often compared wit ...
, and
figures of speech
A figure of speech or rhetorical figure is a word or phrase that intentionally deviates from ordinary language use in order to produce a rhetorical effect. Figures of speech are traditionally classified into '' schemes,'' which vary the ordinary ...
.
History
In 17th-century Japan,
Matsuo Bashō
born then was the most famous poet of the Edo period in Japan. During his lifetime, Bashō was recognized for his works in the collaborative '' haikai no renga'' form; today, after centuries of commentary, he is recognized as the greatest ma ...
originated ''
haibun
is a prosimetric literary form originating in Japan, combining prose and haiku. The range of ''haibun'' is broad and frequently includes autobiography, diary, essay, prose poem, short story and travel journal.
History
The term "''haibun''" was ...
'', a form of prose poetry combining
haiku
is a type of short form poetry originally from Japan. Traditional Japanese haiku consist of three phrases that contain a ''kireji'', or "cutting word", 17 '' on'' (phonetic units similar to syllables) in a 5, 7, 5 pattern, and a ''kigo'', or se ...
with prose. It is best exemplified by his book ''
Oku no Hosomichi
''Oku no Hosomichi'' (, originally ), translated as ''The Narrow Road to the Deep North'' and ''The Narrow Road to the Interior'', is a major work of ''haibun'' by the Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō, considered one of the major texts of Japanese l ...
'', in which he used a literary genre of prose-and-poetry composition of multidimensional writing.
In the West, prose poetry originated in early-19th-century
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
and
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
as a reaction against the traditional
verse line.
The
German Romantics Jean Paul
Jean Paul (; born Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, 21 March 1763 – 14 November 1825) was a German Romantic writer, best known for his humorous novels and stories.
Life and work
Jean Paul was born at Wunsiedel, in the Fichtelgebirge mountain ...
,
Novalis
Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg (2 May 1772 – 25 March 1801), pen name Novalis (), was a German polymath who was a writer, philosopher, poet, aristocrat and mystic. He is regarded as an idiosyncratic and influential figure of ...
,
Friedrich Hölderlin
Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin (, ; ; 20 March 1770 – 7 June 1843) was a German poet and philosopher. Described by Norbert von Hellingrath as "the most German of Germans", Hölderlin was a key figure of German Romanticism. Part ...
, and
Heinrich Heine
Christian Johann Heinrich Heine (; born Harry Heine; 13 December 1797 – 17 February 1856) was a German poet, writer and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of '' Lied ...
may be seen as precursors of the prose poem. Earlier, 18th-century European forerunners of prose poetry had included
James Macpherson
James Macpherson (Gaelic: ''Seumas MacMhuirich'' or ''Seumas Mac a' Phearsain''; 27 October 1736 – 17 February 1796) was a Scottish writer, poet, literary collector and politician, known as the "translator" of the Ossian cycle of epic poem ...
's "translation" of ''
Ossian'' and
Évariste de Parny
Évariste Desiré de Forges, vicomte de Parny (6 February 17535 December 1814) was a French poet.
Biography
De Parny was born in Saint-Paul on the Isle of Bourbon (now Réunion); he came from an aristocratic family from the region of Berry, ...
's "
Chansons madécasses
' (''Madagascan Songs'') is a set of three exotic art songs by Maurice Ravel written in 1925 and 1926 to words from the poetry collection of the same name by Évariste de Parny.
Structure
Scored for mezzo-soprano or baritone, flute, cello ...
".
At the time of the prose poem's establishment as a form,
French poetry
French poetry () is a category of French literature. It may include Francophone poetry composed outside France and poetry written in other languages of France.
French prosody and poetics
The modern French language does not have a significant st ...
was dominated by the
alexandrine
Alexandrine is a name used for several distinct types of verse line with related metrical structures, most of which are ultimately derived from the classical French alexandrine. The line's name derives from its use in the Medieval French ''Roman ...
, a strict and demanding form that poets starting with
Maurice de Guérin
Georges-Maurice de Guérin (4 August 181019 July 1839) was a French poet. His works were imbued with a passion for nature whose intensity reached almost to worship and was enriched by pagan elements. According to Sainte-Beuve, no French poet or ...
(whose "Le Centaure" and "La Bacchante" remain arguably the most powerful prose poems ever written) and
Aloysius Bertrand
Louis Jacques Napoléon Bertrand, better known by his pen name Aloysius Bertrand (20 April 1807 — 29 April 1841), was a French Romantic poet, playwright and journalist. He is famous for having introduced prose poetry in French literature,Stua ...
(in
Gaspard de la nuit
''Gaspard de la nuit'' (subtitled ''Trois poèmes pour piano d'après Aloysius Bertrand''), M. 55 is a suite of piano pieces by Maurice Ravel, written in 1908. It has three movements, each based on a poem or ''fantaisie'' from the collection '' ...
) chose, in almost complete isolation, to cease using. Later
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Pierre Baudelaire (, ; ; 9 April 1821 – 31 August 1867) was a French poetry, French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist and art critic. His poems exhibit mastery in the handling of rhyme and rhythm, contain an exoticis ...
,
Arthur Rimbaud
Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud (, ; 20 October 1854 – 10 November 1891) was a French poet known for his transgressive and surreal themes and for his influence on modern literature and arts, prefiguring surrealism. Born in Charleville, he starte ...
, and
Stéphane Mallarmé
Stéphane Mallarmé ( , ; 18 March 1842 – 9 September 1898), pen name of Étienne Mallarmé, was a French poet and critic. He was a major French symbolist poet, and his work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools of ...
followed their example in works like ''
Paris Spleen'' and ''
Illuminations
Illuminations may refer to:
Shows and festivals
* IllumiNations: Reflections of Earth, a nightly fireworks show currently at Epcot at Walt Disney World Resort
*'' IllumiNations'', original nightly firework show at Epcot at Walt Disney World Resor ...
''.
[Stuart Friebert and David Young (eds.) ''Models of the Universe: An Anthology of the Prose Poem''. (1995)] The prose poem continued to be written in France into the 20th century by such writers as
Max Jacob
Max Jacob (; 12 July 1876 – 5 March 1944) was a French poet, painter, writer, and critic.
Life and career
After spending his childhood in Quimper, Brittany, he enrolled in the Paris Colonial School, which he left in 1897 for an artistic ca ...
,
Henri Michaux
Henri Michaux (; 24 May 1899 – 19 October 1984) was a Belgian-born French poet, writer and painter. Michaux is renowned for his strange, highly original poetry and prose, and also for his art: the Paris Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim ...
,
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny West neighborhood and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris ...
, and
Francis Ponge
Francis Jean Gaston Alfred Ponge (; 27 March 1899 – 6 August 1988) was a French essayist and poet. Influenced by surrealism, he developed a form of prose poem, minutely examining everyday objects. He was the third recipient of the Neustadt Inter ...
.
The writings of
Syria
Syria ( ar, سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, translit=Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic ( ar, الجمهورية العربية السورية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country loc ...
n poet and writer
Francis Marrash (1836–73) featured the first examples of prose poetry in modern
Arabic literature
Arabic literature ( ar, الأدب العربي / ALA-LC: ''al-Adab al-‘Arabī'') is the writing, both as prose and poetry, produced by writers in the Arabic language. The Arabic word used for literature is '' Adab'', which is derived from ...
. From the mid-20th century, the great Arab exponent of prose poetry was the Syrian poet
Adunis
Ali Ahmad Said Esber (, North Levantine: ; born 1 January 1930), also known by the pen name Adonis or Adunis ( ar, أدونيس ), is a Syrian poet, essayist and translator. He led a modernist revolution in the second half of the 20th century, ...
(Ali Ahmad Said Esber, born 1930), a perennial contender for the
Nobel Prize in Literature
)
, image = Nobel Prize.png
, caption =
, awarded_for = Outstanding contributions in literature
, presenter = Swedish Academy
, holder = Annie Ernaux (2022)
, location = Stockholm, Sweden
, year = 1901
, ...
.
The
Modernist
Modernism is both a philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, an ...
poet
T. S. Eliot wrote vehemently against prose poems. He added to the debate about what defines the genre, writing in his introduction to
Djuna Barnes
Djuna Barnes (, June 12, 1892 – June 18, 1982) was an American artist, illustrator, journalist, and writer who is perhaps best known for her novel ''Nightwood'' (1936), a cult classic of lesbian fiction and an important work of modernist litera ...
' highly poeticized 1936 novel ''
Nightwood
''Nightwood'' is a 1936 novel by American author Djuna Barnes that was first published by publishing house Faber and Faber. It is one of the early prominent novels to portray explicit homosexuality between women, and as such can be considered ...
'' that it could not be classed as "poetic prose" as it did not show the rhythm or "musical pattern" of verse. By contrast, other Modernist authors, including
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny West neighborhood and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris ...
and
Sherwood Anderson
Sherwood Anderson (September 13, 1876 – March 8, 1941) was an American novelist and short story writer, known for subjective and self-revealing works. Self-educated, he rose to become a successful copywriter and business owner in Cleveland and ...
, consistently wrote prose poetry.
Canadian
Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...
author
Elizabeth Smart
Elizabeth Ann Gilmour (née Smart; born November 3, 1987) is an American child safety activist and commentator for ABC News. She gained national attention at age 14 when she was abducted from her home in Salt Lake City by Brian David Mitchell. ...
's ''
By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept
''By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept'' is a 1945 novel in prose poetry by the Canadian author Elizabeth Smart (1913–1986). The work was inspired by Smart's passionate affair with the British poet George Barker (1913–1991).
Genes ...
'' (1945) is a relatively isolated example of mid-20th-century English-language poetic prose.
Prose poems made a resurgence in the early 1950s and in the 1960s with American poets
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Gener ...
,
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career sp ...
,
Jack Kerouac
Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac (; March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969), known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist and poet who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation.
Of French-Canadian a ...
,
William S. Burroughs
William Seward Burroughs II (; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist, widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular cultur ...
,
Russell Edson
Russell Edson (1935 – April 29, 2014) was an American poet, novelist, writer, and illustrator. He was the son of the cartoonist-screenwriter Gus Edson.
He studied art early in life and attended the Art Students League as a teenager. He began pu ...
,
Charles Simic
Dušan Simić ( sr-cyr, Душан Симић, ; born May 9, 1938), known as Charles Simic, is a Serbian American poet and former co-poetry editor of the ''Paris Review''. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1990 for ''The World Doesn't ...
,
Robert Bly
Robert Elwood Bly (December 23, 1926 – November 21, 2021) was an American poet, essayist, activist and leader of the mythopoetic men's movement. His best-known prose book is '' Iron John: A Book About Men'' (1990), which spent 62 weeks on ' ...
,
John Ashbery
John Lawrence Ashbery (July 28, 1927 – September 3, 2017) was an American poet and art critic.
Ashbery is considered the most influential American poet of his time. Oxford University literary critic John Bayley wrote that Ashbery "sounded, in ...
, and
James Wright. Edson worked principally in this form, and helped give the prose poem a reputation for surrealist wit. Simic won the
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
The Pulitzer Prize for Poetry is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes awarded annually for Letters, Drama, and Music. It was first presented in 1922, and is given for a distinguished volume of original verse by an American author, published ...
for his 1989 collection, ''The World Doesn't End''.
Since the late 1980s, prose poetry has gained in popularity. Journals have begun specializing in
prose poems or microfiction. In the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
, Stride Books published a 1993 anthology of prose poetry, ''A Curious Architecture''.
[''A Curious Architecture: New British and American Prose Poetry'', London, Stride Press, 1993.]
See also
*
Rhymed prose Rhymed prose is a literary form and literary genre, written in unmetrical rhymes. This form has been known in many different cultures. In some cases the rhymed prose is a distinctive, well-defined style of writing. In modern literary traditions ...
*
Free verse
Free verse is an open form of poetry, which in its modern form arose through the French ''vers libre'' form. It does not use consistent meter patterns, rhyme, or any musical pattern. It thus tends to follow the rhythm of natural speech.
Definit ...
*
Prosimetrum
A ''prosimetrum'' (plural ''prosimetra'') is a poetic composition which exploits a combination of prose (''prosa'') and verse (''metrum'');Braund, Susanna. Prosimetrum. In Cancil, Hubert, and Helmuth Schneider, eds. ''Brill's New Pauly''. Brill O ...
*
Lyric essay
Lyric Essay is a literary hybrid that combines elements of poetry, essay, and memoir. The lyric essay is a relatively new form of creative nonfiction.
John D’Agata and Deborah Tall published a definition of the lyric essay in the '' Seneca Re ...
*
Haibun
is a prosimetric literary form originating in Japan, combining prose and haiku. The range of ''haibun'' is broad and frequently includes autobiography, diary, essay, prose poem, short story and travel journal.
History
The term "''haibun''" was ...
*
Fu (poetry)
''Fu'' (), often translated "rhapsody" or "poetic exposition", is a form of Chinese rhymed prose that was the dominant literary form during the Han dynasty (206AD220). ''Fu'' are intermediary pieces between poetry and prose in which a place, o ...
*
Gasa (poetry)
Gasa (or Kasa) was a form of poetry popular during the Joseon Dynasty in Korea. Gasas were commonly sung, and were popular among yangban women. Jeong Cheol, a poet of the 16th century, is regarded as having perfected the form, which consisted ...
*
Vignette (literature)
A vignette (, also ) is a French loanword expressing a short and descriptive piece of writing that captures a brief period in time. Vignettes are more focused on vivid imagery and meaning rather than plot. Vignettes can be stand-alone, but they a ...
*
Micro-story
*''
Double Room ''Double Room'' was a web-based biannual literary publication founded in 2002 by Peter Connors and Michael Neff to explore the intersection of prose poetry with flash fiction. It published work by popular poets and writers, as well as talented newc ...
''
*''
The English Mail-Coach
''The English Mail-Coach'' is an essay by the English author Thomas De Quincey. A "three-part masterpiece" and "one of his most magnificent works," it first appeared in 1849 in ''Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine'', in the October (Part I) and Dec ...
''
*''
Suspiria de Profundis
''Suspiria de profundis'' (a Latin phrase meaning "sighs from the depths") is a collection of essays in the form of prose poems by English writer Thomas De Quincey, first published in 1845. An examination of the process of memory as influenced by ...
''
References
Sources
* Robert Alexander, C.W. Truesdale, and Mark Vinz. "The Party Train: A Collection of North American Prose Poetry." New Rivers Press, 1996.
* Michel Delville, "The American Prose Poem: Poetic Form and the Boundaries of Genre." Gainesville, FL: University of Florida, 1998
* Stephen Fredman, "Poet’s Prose: The Crisis in American Verse." 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
* Ray Gonzalez, "No Boundaries: Prose Poems by 24 American Poets." Tupelo Press, 2003.
* David Lehman, "Great American prose poems: from Poe to the present." Simon & Schuster, 2003
* Jonathan Monroe, "A Poverty of Objects: The Prose Poem and the Politics of Genre." Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987.
* Margueritte S. Murphy, "A Tradition of Subversion: The Prose Poem from Wilde to Ashbery." Amherst, Mass.: The
University of Massachusetts Press
The University of Massachusetts Press is a university press that is part of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The press was founded in 1963, publishing scholarly books and non-fiction. The press imprint is overseen by an interdisciplinar ...
, 1992.
*
Zygmunt Szweykowski
Zygmunt Szweykowski (7 April 1894 in Krośniewice – 11 February 1978 in Poznań) was a historian of Polish literature who specialized in 19th-century Polish prose.
Life
In 1932-39, Szweykowski held a professorship at the Free Polish University ( ...
, ''Twórczość Bolesława Prusa'' (The Creative Writing of
Bolesław Prus
Aleksander Głowacki (20 August 1847 – 19 May 1912), better known by his pen name Bolesław Prus (), was a Polish novelist, a leading figure in the history of Polish literature and philosophy, as well as a distinctive voice in world li ...
), 2nd ed., Warsaw, Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1972.
External links
The Prose Poem -International journal-The Berkeley Electronic PressSentenceDouble RoomPoetic Form: Prose Poem inc exampleby
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Pierre Baudelaire (, ; ; 9 April 1821 – 31 August 1867) was a French poetry, French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist and art critic. His poems exhibit mastery in the handling of rhyme and rhythm, contain an exoticis ...
'Be Drunk'
{{Authority control
Genres of poetry
Prose