This is a question which I’ve often asked, but it wasn’t until I was editing Her Life Collected that I started to get some answers. Note that these answers didn’t come when I was writing the poems, mind you, but when I was editing. I found that fascinating. Over the years as I have had more and more work published, and more and more people wonder about my work, I have always said that the work itself dictates the form. When an idea comes along, it is clear whether it is a poem, a novel or a play, I have often said. But I must admit, that is not altogether true. Those who read my poems (and of course, I hope many of you will) will find that many of them are narrative. They often describe moments in time, which often includes social interactions and dialogue. And so the question arises, how do I choose my line breaks, and as it turns out, it is this very choice which dictates the difference between poetry and prose/prose poetry. My editor/publisher Adele Ward and I had a lengthy discussion about this issue and she had some fascinating insights:
There has to be a reason for each line break in a poem, and if there isn’t a reason, then it’s a short piece of poetic prose (a prose poem). No reason not to present it in that way. Some lines just fall with the flatness of prose in a poem. You can hear it. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with prose, but the ear can hear a line of prose in a poem, especially when you have a long line that has gone into prose. This might happen in a draft, especially if you write in both forms, and at parts where you’re wanting to get the poem down while it’s in your mind but can’t quite manage yet. Afterwards you would want to take those parts out and use them like notes so you can complete the poem. Sometimes you may want to write poems that alternate prose sections with poetry.
Line breaks are one of the trickiest considerations in poetry. Andrew Motion made me really think about mine all the time. A line break serves a few purposes. One can be that the line breaks work with the rhythm when you read it out loud. If they don’t then it’s prose randomly cut into a poetic stanza. Another reason is to put that little emphasis on the words at line end and particularly at line beginning. One wonderful poet (I know) describes the movement from the end of a line of poetry to the next line as the feeling of stepping off the shore on to a little boat. This stresses the two words, gives a rhythm, and also can work in a lovely neat way if there’s also a little movement in the meaning that’s being reflected. Like ‘the leaves/falling from the trees’. If none of these are your reasons and you have a piece that’s prose-like but you want it to be shaped like the rest of the poem, then each line can be a step forward in the meaning. Actually if the line breaks are just arbitrary to make something look like a poem, and if the rhythm reads like prose, then it would be better presented as a prose poem. There’s absolutely no reason for the line breaks.
As it turns out, I have several prose poems in my book and I didn’t even realize that was what they were when I was writing them. Here’s one which actually relies mostly on dialogue:
Urban Doorstep
Lock the top. Lock the bottom. The alarm sets with two long
beeps, one for each step to the street.
Excuse me. Are you happy with your window cleaner?
My neighbour is watering her window box. A short arm
extended over the wrought iron railing. It’s the beginning of
spring.
I noticed him the other day. He’s good?
‘Yes, and reliable. But expensive.’
It’s worth it, though – both inside and out. Especially at this time
of year.
‘Yes, a little sun.’
It’s been a long winter.
‘Yes, it has.’
Yes, it has. She picks a paint flake off the rail. Two grey
strands steal away across her brow, escapees from the styled
mass.
‘I meant to introduce myself. I’ve been a horrible
neighbour.’
Oh, it’s quite all right. We’re all so busy. The time does go so fast.
Something in her face keeps me there. The normal, sunken
space beneath her cheek; the puffiness round her eyes. My
right hip settles in its socket. I place my bag at my feet and
lean against the rail.
‘Settling into a new home – it’s so much work, I know.’
I do love the street. But it has been a difficult year. It’s my
husband. Well, actually, it’s us –
‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’
Thirty years of marriage. I took it very badly.
‘How could you not?’
I’m better now. I’m going to the theatre tonight.
‘Yes, you must get out. And you must come for a drink.’
I’d like that. And you must come to me. Then silence.
‘But the window washer’s number. I’ll put it through your
door.’
Yes, please do. It will be good to have sun in these rooms.
Yes, it’s tricky (I’ve worried about it most recently this week), but unless one’s a theorist or judge having to disqualify pieces, classification doesn’t matter too much. The term “prose poem” has historical connotations that put some people off. It’s almost a genre. And where’s the line between that and Flash Fiction or Experimental prose? On the flap of Lachlan Mackinnon’s “Small Hours” it says that the book ends with “a long poem … written mostly in prose”. I don’t think it’s a poem.
It sounds like you have an approach you feel comfortable with. Harder, I find, is trying to appreciate how others use line-breaks: why are there so many non-formalist box-shaped stanzas? The poem’s layout could be chosen for visual effect, or line-breaks can replace punctuation so that the layout’s like that of an auto-cue script. Convention and social pressure play their part. I have a few poems in 2 forms – one with line-breaks, the other without – sending out whichever form suits the particular editor/competition.
Litrefs: I agree with lots of your points: I often think that poems are put into box shapes as a signal to the reader saying aha guys! This is now a prose poem. To me that’s really not a good enough reason. And yes, line breaks are such wiggly things, so subjective. I also have a poem in the book which, if I feel like it, I have in a more “prosey” form to submit like that. So maybe the answer is, it’s in the eye of the beholder. Or maybe it doesn’t matter anyway. Then throw flash fiction into the mix and the whole thing’s up for grabs.
Thanks so much for stopping by!
It is all very confusing. I read that lovely poem up there – and thought, ‘this would be a neat flash piece’. Hmm! Adele’s words are great – thanks, Sue.
I’m sure many pieces of flash fiction could be included as prose poems in a collection. At that point it would be the context that would determine whether you’d call it a prose poem or flash fiction. If it fits into a poetry collection along with the styles and themes of the other works then it’s a prose poem. Sue’s pieces, like the one she shows here, fits in with the whole collection. If submitted to a flash fiction contest it would then be called flash fiction.
The way line breaks can stand in for punctuation goes with the idea that the line breaks work with the rhythm you want.
I also know people who write ‘shape’ poems which dictate the line breaks (although the line breaks still tend to have another reason). I even heard of somebody who wanted the lines to have the same number of characters, so there can be quite mathematical and visual reasons for a poem to be shaped the way it is.
The mistake is when people are breaking lines at about the right length to make a poem, when really it just reads as prose.
I should credit Eva Salzman who made the comment about a line break feeling like stepping off the shore on to a little boat.
Fascinating – I wonder (with regard to the flash fiction element) whether length of the piece itself also has something to do with it? I cant see a flash story of 999 words finding its way into a collection of poetry – although I”d love to be proven wrong there!
There are so many grey areas in both poetry and prose. They mix and meld.
I remember being at a workshop with the poet Catherine Smith. Someone asked her what her definition of a poem was. Her reply stayed with me.
“If the writer says its a poem, its a poem.”
I loved the power that gave the maker to label their own stuff!
Thank you for bring up this concept of lines breaks, rhythm, meaning prose poetry and the rest. It interesting to hear a discussion of the subject.
Yes, length is another interesting factor. I often think the length as well as the language and theme makes a piece of writing a prose poem rather than another prose form. So there would be a cut-off point in length. But then Virginia Woolf sustains it in a book like The Waves, so rules are there to be broken it seems. A prose poem can be longer than flash fiction.
An interesting discussion, thanks.
I’ve always thought that the notion of a prose poem arises from the fact that there’s inevitably a grey area between prose and poetry, given that some prose can be very poetic, in its use of words/images and its rhythm, while some – let’s say verse – can be very unpoetic.
Poetic prose can always be seen as a prose poem – Adele mentions context, which of course is very important in determining how we approach it. Rather in the way that an audience expecting to see a sitcom will laugh at opening lines which they would have remained silent for if they had been expecting a serious piece.
Rhythm, which was mentioned, is also very important for me. Can you have poetry of any kind without some sort of rhythm? Given that rhythm can be anything from thumping iambic pentameter to a much more subtle background undulation. And line breaks must always have some sort of relationship to the rhythm, whether they emphasise and respond to it, or whether they work against it to produce a particular effect – analogous perhaps to syncopation in music.
Chris
I’ve copied and pasted this in my How To Write A Poem folder. (Credit you and Adele?) I took a poem along to my writer’s group. I’m quite comfortable reading prose out loud, but I was terrified. But it went okay. I still don’t really understand how to write a poem. I am entering Ward/Woods poem competition though. Ten pounds worth! It’s for a good cause.
What a terrific discussion. I’m thrilled. And it’s great to see some new people here, too. Thanks, all.
Sue always starts great discussions and there are interesting points here and on Facebook. I agree with Chris’s point about rhythm – it can be subtle but it is there in all kinds of poetry.
We read Dylan Thomas’s ‘A Child’s Christmas in Wales’ in a short prose discussion group I go to. Two people called it a prose poem, I thought it wasn’t, somebody Googled it and found it described as a prose poem. It seemed longish for a prose poem and more like memoir. Then I heard it read out and the rhythm really worked like that – so perhaps it is a prose poem.
I suppose this type of writing could all be called poetic prose, and if it’s short and fits into a poetry collection I’d call it a prose poem.
I’d love to see somebody who doesn’t normally write poetry suddenly discover a talent in the competition! I have no say in it as it’s judged by Carol Ann Duffy so no need to take my advice into account when entering!
Whether you write poetry, fiction, nonfiction, flash fiction, or poetry, the name isn’t the important thing – the important thing is that it works.
Patricia Debney published a whole book of prose poems http://patriciadebney.wordpress.com/poetry/
and you’ll find one on my website (click on ‘prose poem’) I called it a prose poem because after I’d written it, I didn’t know what it was and decided it was a prose poem. And I think that’s key. It’s what the writer says it is!
Thanks for the post, Sue. Yes, the ‘line’ has to be the principal shaping tool for a free verse poem, followed by the stanza. No-one ever taught me about line break so when I started teaching I was determined to pass on what I’d discovered… the hardway! For me, it’s only this element of poetic craft that’s the missing from the making/shaping of a prose poem which works with phrase, sentence, paragraph.
I don’t think all poetic prose = prose poem though, and a couple of things that seem essential, and are challenging too, are 1) avoiding the ‘drag’ of the prosaic, and 2) poetic closure, i.e. a sense of closure that still leaves the poem ‘open’ for the reader. That, I find, is one of the most difficult things to acheive in any poem, formal, free verse or prose.
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Fascinating. The stepping onto a boat is so perfect, it is just like that. I love the discussion.
Howard Nemerov attempts to clarify part of the question.
—
Because You Asked about the Line Between Prose and Poetry
Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle
That while you watched turned to pieces of snow
Riding a gradient invisible
From silver aslant to random, white, and slow.
There came a moment that you couldn’t tell.
And then they clearly flew instead of fell.
Howard Nemerov
—
How serendipitious, Sue! I have just received a copy of the Rose Metal Guide to Prose Poetry, because I suspected that some of my flashes were actually prose poems. And it is makes the most wonderful reading – a collection of very short essays by poets on what a prose poem is to them, how they came to it. I feel I have a far better understanding now of what one is – or perhaps isn’t! But still not sure I can sum it up, more a question of I know it when I see it. The gorgeous poem you put here does feel like a poem to me, not a flash, but it’s a minuscule shift from one to the other, it dances in a different way, to paraphrase one of the essays in the book! I am so inspired by this book – and can’t wait to get hold of yours. And agree completely with Vanessa (quoting Catherine) that we can label our own writing pretty much the way we want to!