On Prose Poems

In A Poetry Handbook, Mary Oliver writes this about prose poems:

"What you see on the page is a fairly short block of type--a paragraph or two, rarely more than a page. It looks like prose. Perhaps it has characters, perhaps not. Often, it is pure description. It usually does have the same sense of difference from worldly or sequential time that one feels in a poem. And it does certainly ask to be read with the same concentration, and allowance for the fanciful and experimental, that we give the poem.

"Because the prose poem is brief--or perhaps just because it is something other than a poem--it seems more often than not to have at its center a situation rather than a narrative. Nothing much happens, that is, except this: through particularly fresh and intense writing, something happens to the reader--one's felt response to the 'situation' of the prose poem grows fresh and intense also."

I wish I'd had Oliver's definition at hand during my thesis defense. The only question that I had trouble answering was from a prof who didn't like prose poems. All I could tell him was my process--that when line breaks feel stilted or unnatural, I write in prose. Or, on the other hand, when the ideas and images are coming too fast to worry about line breaks. Either way, the primary quality of prose poems (I think) is immediacy.

Which is why I had so much trouble with Michael Fried's prose poems in The Next Bend in the Road. Here's an excerpt from a poem called "The Wound":

"The following is based on a prose poem by Picasso's friend Max
Jacob. In the first decade of the twentieth century, a Japanese youth with
a talent for drawing, who had recently lost an adorable younger sister to an
obsure illness, left home to seek his artistic fortune in France."

Frankly, I don't see any similarities between Oliver's definition and what I just quoted here. I don't get it. (And in case you're wondering, it just goes on like that for another half a page.) It seems that paragraphs like these are what give critics the ability to say prose poems are not really poetry.

But then there's this (from "John Montiere answer to question three" by A. Van Jordan):

"I see my son pulled from between MacNolia's legs. I see my son's legs
kicking from between her legs. Blood paints the skin of the midwife's
hands and arms up to her elbows. Blood paints my son's legs up to his
waist; all i can see is his kicking. He is grounded, feet first. His
head emerges and he sings his song."

So different! The language isn't unusual, the description not overdone, and yet, I can clearly identify this as poetry, where I can't in the Fried example. And I'm certainly striving for something more like A. Van Jordan's prose than Fried's.

I'm serious about that metaphor thing

I find it really difficult to think of fresh, unique metaphors. I'm okay with similies, but you take out like or as and all of a sudden, I'm on a bike without training wheels for the first time. Wait, is that a metaphor? Crap. I guess I can do it when I'm not trying. Well, maybe that isn't fresh and unique, which is really the goal.

Once, in a workshop, someone said, "I know you're not really a metaphor kinda person, but this poem could really use a few." That's when I realized I had a problem.

My other problem: sometimes I write prose with line breaks. Which begs the question, why don't I just write creative non-fiction? I'm not quite sure.

Changing the subject.

I have this kernel of an idea for a manuscript, and about two poems that might be the beginnings of that manuscript. It will be called Trailer Park Debutante and said debutante is a stripper. She's not the main character, at least not now, but she's pretty important. What I'm trying to figure out right now is her signature song. I want it to be a little bit cliched, but a little bit edgy, if that's possible, and I am dying for suggestions. I'm thinking either classic-rock, 80's-hair band, or southern rock a-la-Lynyrd Skynyrd, but right now the only song coming to my mind is "Cherry Pie" and that's just too obvious. Please help!

To "ing" or not to "ing" and other stylistic concerns

In a workshop the other day, I mentioned that I didn't like verbs ending in "ing" in poetry. Mary says, "Oh, you're one of those," or something along those lines, and I get to thinking. Why don't I like "ing" words? At first, I think it is because other verb tenses are more direct, more impactful, but as I continue thinking about it, I realize that I only believe it because I have heard it over and over from a friend of mine who has always given me good feedback on my poems.

Needless to say, this got me thinking about all the other stlyistic choices I thought I had made about poetry, and realized they all come from someone else. I know it is impossible to spend a year and a half in various poetry workshops and not come away with some ideas that are influenced by others, but now I'm wondering if I even know what I like. (Anyone see the episode of Gilmore Girls when Lorelai worries that she likes everything she likes because her mother doesn't? That's how I feel.)

Now, with my chapbook nearly ready to send out and my thesis looming heavily on the horizon, I find myself asking: Did I write these poems, or did my workshops? This semester is probably the last time during my MFA that I'll take any workshops, so what is going to happen to my poetry and myself as a writer when I have to start making these decisions myself?

The Line Break Conundrum

There was an open mic last night in Youngstown, with Steve Reese as the featured reader. Nice crowd, some good poetry, some bad poetry (as always with open mics). I wasn't nervous prior to reading, since I've read in front of this crowd a couple times before, but when I got up to the podium--rather, the music stand stolen from the YSU Music department--my heart started pounding. I hate that! You think you're prepared and ready to go, and then your body decides something else entirely.

Well, getting to the line break conundrum. After I read, my friend Jay (whose opinion I trust quite a bit) told me that my poems have a much greater impact when read out loud than when he reads them on paper. The only possible reason for this is that I don't read my line breaks. I spend a lot of time revising my line breaks, looking for good enjambment potential and natural pauses, and I even practice reading the poem how it looks on the page. But when it is time to read for an audience, I just read the sentences, and line breaks be damned.

This goes back to tenth grade English, when Mr. Bordine told us that if a line ended without punctuation, there was no pause. So I learned to read poems without pauses. Which is fine, except that those editors out there that I'm trying to impress don't get to hear me read out loud, and are therefore forced to read the line breaks I type in. And what if they aren't working?