Ideas of Open Form and Closure in Prose Poetry

Prose Poetry ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 79-101
Author(s):  
Paul Hetherington ◽  
Cassandra Atherton
Keyword(s):  
Lyric Poetry ◽  
Prose Poetry ◽  
Open Form ◽  
White Space ◽  
Prose Poems ◽  
Opening And Closing

This chapter focuses on ideas of open form and closure in prose poetry. While lineated lyric poetry is typically highly suggestive and open to various interpretations, it simultaneously tends toward conveying a sense of formal resolution and closure. The attention to formal elements in lineated lyric poetry, including the beginnings and endings of lines and the opening and closing of works, is very different from other kinds of less formalized writing — including prose poetry, where sentences are drawn together in paragraphs rather than separated. Prose poetry refuses lineated poetry's rhythmic closure even as it visually preempts its conclusion in the capacious white space that follows the last sentence of the paragraph. In other words, openness and closure are likely to be manifested very differently in lineated poems compared to prose poems. Prose poems have their own integrity as works, but their sense of completeness turns on their appeal to incompleteness in the same way as the literary fragment. Structurally, prose poetry's use of the sentence rather than the line as its unit of composition allows the poet to engage in “narrative digression.”

Prose Poetry and TimeSpace

Prose Poetry ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 128-150
Author(s):  
Paul Hetherington ◽  
Cassandra Atherton
Keyword(s):  
Relative Abundance ◽  
Prose Poetry ◽  
Prose Fiction ◽  
White Space ◽  
Prose Poem ◽  
Forward Movement ◽  
Prose Poems ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Narrative Progression

This chapter addresses prose poetry's distortion of space and time, exploring the effects created by prose poetry's simultaneously condensed and onrushing language. This is unlike lineated poetry because although lineated lyric poems, in particular, often create a sense of considerable compression and intensity, the relative abundance of white space in such works creates a countervailing sense that there is room to think and breathe. Prose poetry is also unlike prose fiction, in which the emphasis on narrative progression gives priority to a sense of directed forward movement through TimeSpace — an emphasis that is very different from the effects created by most prose poems. While a prose poem may create an impression of forward momentum as the grammar and sequencing of the prose poem's tightly packed sentences carry the reader forward, its poetic tropes simultaneously complicate or problematize any sense of one-way progression. As a result, prose poems usually yield for the reader a complex textual engagement in which ideas and motifs frequently fold back on themselves, or present unresolved issues for consideration.

Prose Poetry

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Hetherington ◽  
Cassandra Atherton
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
William Wordsworth ◽  
English Language ◽  
Literary Form ◽  
Prose Poetry ◽  
Prose Poem ◽  
Prose Poems ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Key Characteristics ◽  
Anglophone World

This is the first book of its kind — an introduction to the history, development, and features of English-language prose poetry, an increasingly important and popular literary form that is still too little understood and appreciated. The book introduces prose poetry's key characteristics, charts its evolution from the nineteenth-century to the present, and discusses many historical and contemporary prose poems that both demonstrate their great diversity around the Anglophone world and show why they represent some of today's most inventive writing. A prose poem looks like prose but reads like poetry: it lacks the line breaks of other poetic forms but employs poetic techniques, such as internal rhyme, repetition, and compression. The book explains how this form opens new spaces for writers to create riveting works that reshape the resources of prose while redefining the poetic. Discussing prose poetry' s precursors, including William Wordsworth and Walt Whitman, and prose poets such as Charles Simic, Russell Edson, Lydia Davis, and Claudia Rankine, the book pays equal attention to male and female prose poets, documenting women's essential but frequently unacknowledged contributions to the genre. Revealing how prose poetry tests boundaries and challenges conventions to open up new imaginative vistas, this is an essential book for all readers, students, teachers, and writers of prose poetry.

scholarly journals समकालीन नेपाली गद्यकवितामा वर्णविन्यासवक्रता [Characterization in contemporary Nepali prose poetry]

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 92-106
Author(s):  
Khil Prasad Baral
Keyword(s):  
Meaningful Use ◽  
Prose Poetry ◽  
Theoretical Discussion ◽  
Study Analysis ◽  
Prose Poems ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
Deductive Method ◽  
Descriptive Method

पूर्वीय साहित्यशास्त्रमा आचार्य कुन्तकद्वारा प्रतिपादित वक्रोक्तिसिद्धान्त मूलतः एउटा समन्वयशील सिद्धान्त हो । पूर्ववर्ती आचार्यहरूका मान्यतासमेतलाई समाहित गर्ने गरी प्रस्तुत गर्न खोजिएको यस सिद्धान्तमा कुन्तकले वक्रोक्तिका विभिन्न छ भेद तथा तिनका उपभेदहरूको चर्चा गरेका छन् । यस लेखमा उनले प्रस्तुत गरेका वक्रोक्तिका छ भेदहरूमध्ये वर्णविन्यासवक्रताका आधारमा केही समकालीन नेपाली गद्यकविताहरूको अध्ययन विश्लेषण गरिएको छ । यसका लागि सर्वप्रथम वक्रोक्तिसिद्धान्त र वर्णविन्यासवक्रताका बारेमा सङ्क्षिप्त सैद्धान्तिक चर्चा गरिएको छ । त्यस्तै समकालीन नेपाली गद्यकवितामा वर्णविन्यासवक्रताको प्रगोग कसरी भएको छ भन्ने सन्दर्भलाई स्पष्ट पार्न विभिन्न समकालीन कविका कवितांशलाई उहाहरणका रूपमा प्रस्तुत गरी तिनमा पाइने वर्णविन्यासवक्रताको अध्ययन विश्लेषण गरिएको छ । विक्रम संवत् सत्तरीको दशकयता प्रकाशित कविताहरूमा केन्द्रित यस अध्ययनमा वर्णविन्यासवक्रताका छवटै भेदहरूका आधारमा कविताहरूको विश्लेषण गरिएको छ । प्राथमिक र द्वितीयक दुवै स्रोतका सामग्रीको प्रयोग गरी वर्णनात्मक पद्धतिअनुसार विवेच्य सामग्रीहरूको विश्लेषण गरिएको छ । मूलतः निगमनात्मक पद्धतिमा आधारित यस अध्ययनबाट समकालीन नेपाली गद्यकवितामा पूर्वीय काव्यशास्त्रमा वर्णित वर्णविन्यासवक्रताको सफल र सार्थक प्रयोग पाइने निष्कर्ष निकालिएको छ ।[In Eastern literature, the theory of curvature formulated by Acharya Kuntak is basically a coordinating theory. In this theory, which seeks to incorporate the beliefs of the earlier Acharyas, Kuntak discusses the six distinctions of satire and its variants. In this article, the study analysis of some contemporary Nepali prose poems has been analyzed on the basis of chromaticism out of the six distinctions of irony presented by him. For this, first of all, a brief theoretical discussion has been given about the theory of curvature and chronology. Similarly, in order to clarify the context of how the use of colloquialism has been used in contemporary Nepali prose poetry, various contemporary poetic poems have been presented as examples and the study of colloquialism found in them has been analyzed. This study focuses on the poems published in the seventies of Bikram Samvat and analyzes the poems on the basis of all the six distinctions of chromaticism. The material of both primary and secondary sources has been analyzed according to the descriptive method. Basically, this study based on the deductive method has concluded that the successful and meaningful use of the chromatic descriptions described in Eastern poetry in contemporary Nepali prose poetry has been found.]

Orthodox Prose Poetry

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick Admussen
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Prose Poetry ◽  
The Political ◽  
Study Group ◽  
State Socialism ◽  
Prose Poem ◽  
Prose Poems ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Way

This chapter opens by studying the two most seminal prose poets of the 1950s, Ke Lan and Guo Feng. It shows that by faithfully ventriloquizing state socialism, they effectively subjectivize it, putting the words of the collective into the mouth of the individual. It demonstrates the way in which the political pressures of the 1950s provoked acts of definition and organization on the part of prose poets. The second half of chapter three reads the prose poetry community itself as a key text of orthodox art. It finds that an intentional modeling of prose poetry communities on the structures of the Communist Party has produced a set of dynamics that are hierarchical, inter-organizational, and self-reproductive. These dynamics influence the composition of prose poems through the interventions of educators, editors, and study group administrators, leading to the conclusion that many people participate in the writing of each orthodox prose poem.

Prose Poetry

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Desmarais ◽  
David Weir
Keyword(s):  
Essential Oil ◽  
Prose Poetry ◽  
Prose Poem ◽  
Urban Experience ◽  
Prose Poems ◽  
The World ◽  
Spleen De Paris ◽  
Fleurs Du Mal

This chapter treats the prose poem as the decadent genre par excellence by focusing on Charles Baudelaire’s Le Spleen de Paris (Paris Spleen, 1869). The prose poem is well suited to the expression of decadent culture because of its formal subversion of conventional poetry, especially as adapted by Baudelaire to articulate “the bump and lurch” of urban experience. J. K. Huysmans certified the decadent credentials of the genre when he described it in À rebours (Against Nature, 1884) as “the osmazome of literature, the essential oil of art,” a literary distillation that makes it “an aesthetic treat to none but the most discerning.” The article analyzes “Any Where Out of the World” and other prose poems in relation to certain poems in Le Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil, 1857), observing no loss of metaphorical power in the more “prosaic” medium despite Baudelaire’s secular and subversive treatment of many of the same poetic material given more elevated, spiritual treatment in the earlier collection.

Women and Prose Poetry

Prose Poetry ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 199-223
Author(s):  
Paul Hetherington ◽  
Cassandra Atherton
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Prose Poetry ◽  
Prose Poem ◽  
Prose Poems ◽  
Critical View ◽  
Male Power ◽  
Comprehensive Study

This chapter highlights the tradition of English-language prose poetry by women. It explores what women's prose poetries may be — not only in terms of content and approach but in terms of technique and emphasis. The chapter begins by looking at Holly Iglesias's seminal text, Boxing Inside the Box: Women's Prose Poetry (2004), which is the most comprehensive study of women's prose poetry to date. Iglesias advocates for the liberation of women prose poets, using the prose poem box as a metaphor for their containment. Beginning with Carolyn Forché's famous and disturbing prose poem about male power and brutality, “The Colonel,” and ending with C. D. Wright's hybrid prose poem essay, Iglesias's book celebrates women prose poets by giving them space and prominence. Ultimately, the neglect of many women prose poets did not occur because women were not writing prose poems; it is just that many women were not writing the kinds of prose poems that fit the prevalent critical view of what successful prose poems might look like.

The Image and Memory in Reading Prose Poetry

Prose Poetry ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 153-176
Author(s):  
Paul Hetherington ◽  
Cassandra Atherton
Keyword(s):  
Visual Imagery ◽  
Prose Poetry ◽  
First Century ◽  
Arthur Rimbaud ◽  
Prose Poems ◽  
Creative Practice ◽  
Art Forms ◽  
Twenty First Century

This chapter describes the use of visual imagery in prose poetry. It examines how such imagery relates to evocations of memory, and the continuing connection of some of prose poetry's effects to those generated by photographs and ekphrastic responses to a range of art forms. Importantly, the connection between prose poetry and photography is also historical. The combination of nostalgia, modernity, and fragmentation found in Charles Baudelaire's prose poems is not unlike the qualities evident in many photographs from the period. Ever since Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud, many prose poems have been dependent on striking visual imagery, enabling readers to “see” what they are invoking — and this remains true into the twenty-first century. Indeed, some contemporary prose poets connect photography and prose poetry in descriptions of their creative practice, or in references to photographs in their works.

Prose Poetry, Rhythm, and the City

Prose Poetry ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 51-76
Author(s):  
Paul Hetherington ◽  
Cassandra Atherton
Keyword(s):  
William Wordsworth ◽  
English Language ◽  
Prose Poetry ◽  
Free Verse ◽  
Prose Poems ◽  
Poetic Diction ◽  
The City ◽  
Crucial Part ◽  
The Way ◽  
Language Poets

The chapter examines the rhythms of prose poetry, which are different from those found in metered verse, and vary, too, from the rhythms of free verse. The main differences relate to what has sometimes been understood as a deficiency in prose poetry — namely, that prose poets do not have meter or the poetic line when they try to achieve effects of cadence or musicality. But because of the English language's grammatical flexibility, these resources allow for an almost infinite rhythmic variety in prose poems. Such variety is a crucial part of the prose poetry tradition, notwithstanding the deliberately fractured rhythms or flat tonality of some works. William Wordsworth wrote lineated poetry, but in expressing a view that prose and poetry ought to be written in the same kind of language, and in repudiating what he understood to be “poetic diction,” Wordsworth opened the way for English-language poets to explicitly recognize the connections between poetry and prose. In other words, he helped to lay the ground not only for English-language free verse but for English-language prose poetry, too.

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