Abstract
The success of books such as Charles Simic’s The World Doesn’t End: Prose Poems (1989) seem to have helped establish the genre of prose poetry, but acceptance seems to have taken longer in the UK. Only recently have UK interviewers, editors, critics and judges embraced the concept of the prose poem. At the same time, readers and poets may talk about the form in quite different ways, and the writing itself is not dependent on the name ‘prose poetry’ to achieve its effects. The affordances prose gives the poet beg investigation, as do the ways in which poets talk about their use of prose. These questions will be discussed in relation to recent works by Claudia Rankine, Simon Armitage and Peter Riley.
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Notes
- 1.
For example, Michael Riffaterre, Semiotics of Poetry (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), 116.
- 2.
Michael Riffaterre, “On the Prose Poem’s Formal Features,” in The Prose Poem in France: Theory and Practice, ed. Mary Ann Caws and Hermine Riffaterre (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 117.
- 3.
That is, despite the struggles of earlier collections, such as Mark Strand’s The Monument (1978), which was initially nominated for a major award and then withdrawn. Admittedly, it is a work that confounds one’s understanding of poetry in a more confrontational way.
- 4.
Fredman used the term ‘poet’s prose’ and, though this never gained traction, his ideas about prose poetry are significant and durable. See Stephen Fredman , Poet’s Prose: The Crisis in American Verse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), viii, 10.
- 5.
Stephen Fredman , Poet’s Prose, 10.
- 6.
Fredman, Poet’s Prose, 139.
- 7.
Robert Frank and Henry Sayre, eds., The Line in Postmodern Poetry (University of Illinois Press, 1988), ix–x; Marjorie Perloff , Poetry On & Off the Page: Essays for Emergent Occasions (Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1998), 116–117; and Charles O. Hartman, Free Verse: An Essay on Prosody (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), 11.
- 8.
See Fredman, Poet’s Prose, 10 and Anthony Howell, ed., “The Prose Poem—What the Hell Is It?” The Fortnightly Review (2016), http://fortnightlyreview.co.uk/2016/04/prose-poetry/.
- 9.
This might include the writer new to poetry, as well as the reader new to poetry, as Robert Alexander narrates, in “Prose Poetry ,” The Marie Alexander Poetry Series (2016), http://mariealexanderseries.com/prosepoem.shtml.
- 10.
Michel Delville, The American Prose Poem: Poetic Form and the Boundaries of Genre, (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1998), 10 and Margueritte Murphy , A Tradition of Subversion: The Prose Poem in English from Wilde to Ashbery (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992).
- 11.
Murphy, Tradition of Subversion, 9.
- 12.
Allen Ginsberg , “Notes for Howl and Other Poems,” in American Poetic Theory, ed. George Perkins (Open Library: Holt, Rinehart & Winston of Canada Ltd., 1972), 345.
- 13.
Philip Gross , “Voices in the Forest: Three Ways of Conceiving of a Work in Progress with Selected Pieces from Evi and the Devil,” Axon: Creative Explorations #6 (2014), http://www.axonjournal.com.au/issue-6/voices-forest.
- 14.
Kate Kellaway, “Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine Review—The Ugly Truth of Racism,” The Guardian, 30 August 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/aug/30/claudia-rankine-citizen-american-lyric-review, accessed 22 September 2016.
- 15.
Tristram Fane Saunders, “Claudia Rankine Wins £10,000 Forward Prize with Book of Prose Poems,” The Telegraph, 30 September 2015, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/claudia-rankine-wins-forward-prize-with-book-of-prose-poems/, accessed 11 August 2016.
- 16.
Adam Fitzgerald, “‘That’s Not Poetry; It’s Sociology!’—In Defence of Claudia Rankine ’s Citizen,” The Guardian, 23 October 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2015/oct/23/claudia-rankine-citizen-poetry-defence, accessed 11 August 2016.
- 17.
Claudia Rankine , Citizen: An American Lyric (Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2014), 23–36; references to this text will be given in parenthesis hereafter.
- 18.
Marjorie Perloff , Postmodern Genres (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989), 7.
- 19.
Lyn Hejinian, My Life (Los Angeles: Green Integer Books, 2002).
- 20.
And Rankine’s 2001 collection Plot is composed largely of prose poetry .
- 21.
Commonality with the lyric essay is observable, but a full consideration of this form is beyond the scope of consideration of this chapter.
- 22.
Also observed by Howell, in “The Prose Poem….”
- 23.
Fredman, Poet’s Prose, 5.
- 24.
The strategy of the writing recalls Atwood’s ambiguous second person in “A Parable” (Atwood 1997, 101–102).
- 25.
For example, Jeremy Noel-Tod, The Telegraph, 24 June 2010 and Paul Batchelor, The Guardian, 5 June 2010, respectively.
- 26.
Heaney merely called his 21 prose poems in Stations “pieces”. See, Stations (Belfast: Ulsterman Press, 1975), 3. Much later, Heaney revisited the form in the sequence “Found Prose,” in District & Circle (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), 36–41.
- 27.
Simon Armitage , “Interview,” The Poetry Archive, 2010, http://www.poetryarchive.org/interview/simon-armitage-interview, accessed 11 August 2016.
- 28.
See Howell, “The Prose Poem…”.
- 29.
Simon Armitage in conversation with the author, University of Canberra, 16 September 2016.
- 30.
Armitage’s comments during poetry reading, Poetry on the Move Festival, University of Canberra, 13 September 2016.
- 31.
Armitage, “The Parable of the Solicitor and the Poet”, Inaugural lecture, Oxford University, 2015, http://www.english.ox.ac.uk/news-events/news/201511/listen-professor-simon-armitages-inaugural-lecture-professor-poetry.html, accessed 22 September 2016.
- 32.
Dan Holloway, “The Place of Poetry in the World—Simon Armitage ’s Inaugural Lecture,” Sabotage Reviews, 2015, http://sabotagereviews.com/2015/11/26/the-place-of-poetry-in-the-world-simon-armitages-inaugural-lecture/, accessed 22 September 2016. NB: It was noticeable that, in a symposium keynote address, of the nine works Armitage referred in detail only one was by a female poet, so that male privilege might also be an issue. The poets were: Seamus Heaney , Ted Hughes, Geoffrey Hill , Paul Muldoon, Robert Graves, Edward Thomas, Jorie Graham, Douglas Dunn, and Thom Gunn (Armitage 2016b).
- 33.
Michael Delgado, “Review: Simon Armitage Inaugural Lecture,” The Oxford Culture Review (2015), https://theoxfordculturereview.com/2015/11/26/review-simon-armitage-inaugural-lecture/, accessed 22 September 2016.
- 34.
See Howell, “The Prose Poem…”.
- 35.
Armitage, in conversation, 2016b.
- 36.
Paul Sutton, review of Seeing Stars, “Unoriginality & Simon Armitage ,” Stride, 2010, http://www.stridemagazine.co.uk/Stride%20mag2010/May%202010/Armitage%20review.htm, accessed 1 August 2016.
- 37.
Simon Armitage , Seeing Stars (London: Faber & Faber, 2010), 32.
- 38.
Armitage, Seeing Stars, 17.
- 39.
The idea of the line being a breath unit was made popular by Charles Olson in his famous essay “Projective Verse”.
- 40.
Yury Lotman, Analysis of the Poetic Text, ed. and trans. D. Barton Johnson (Michigan: Ardis/Ann Arbor, 1976), 27.
- 41.
Peter Riley , The Glacial Stairway (Manchester: Carcanet, 2011), 8, https://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781847770790, references hereafter in parenthesis.
- 42.
Peter Riley, “In Conversation with Keith Tuma,” Jacket #11, 2000, http://jacketmagazine.com/11/riley-iv-by-tuma.html, accessed 1 August 2016.
- 43.
Peter Riley, “In conversation…”.
- 44.
An earlier version of this work was published as a chapbook by Oystercatcher Press. There is a sustained interest in the possibilities of the prose poem in Riley’s work (e.g. in the chapbook, The Ascent of Kinder Scout, 2014).
- 45.
Fredman, Poet’s Prose, 144.
- 46.
Marjorie Perloff , The Poetics of Indeterminacy: Rimbaud to Cage (Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1999), 291.
- 47.
N. Santilli , Such Rare Citings (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson Press, 2002), 32.
- 48.
Fredman, Poet’s Prose, 147.
- 49.
Santilli, Such Rare Citings, 36.
- 50.
Lotman, Analysis of the Poetic Text, 25.
- 51.
Delville, American Prose Poem, 10.
- 52.
Ali Jane Smith, “The Mongrel: Australian Prose Poetry ,” Australian Poetry Journal 4.1 (2014): 6–14.
- 53.
Steven Monte , Invisible Fences— Prose Poetry as a Genre in French and American Literature (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), 236.
- 54.
Philip Gross, “Voices in the forest…”.
- 55.
Alexander, “Prose Poetry ”, Marie Alexander Poetry Series.
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———. “Interview.” The Poetry Archive, 2010b. http://www.poetryarchive.org/interview/simon-armitage-interview. Accessed 11 August 2016.
———. “The Parable of the Solicitor and the Poet.” Inaugural Lecture, Oxford University, 2015. http://www.english.ox.ac.uk/news-events/news/201511/listen-professor-simon-armitages-inaugural-lecture-professor-poetry.html. Accessed 22 September 2016.
———. Comments during poetry reading, Poetry on the Move Festival, University of Canberra, 13 September 2016.
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Gross, Philip. “Voices in the Forest: Three Ways of Conceiving of a Work in Progress with Selected Pieces from Evi and the Devil.” Axon: Creative Explorations #6, 2014. http://www.axonjournal.com.au/issue-6/voices-forest. Accessed 13 July 2016.
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Murphy, Margueritte. A Tradition of Subversion: The Prose Poem in English from Wilde to Ashbery. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992.
Noel-Tod, Jeremy. “Review of Seeing Stars by Simon Armitage”. The Telegraph, June 24, 2010. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/7851863/Seeing-Stars-by-Simon-Armitage-review.html. Accessed 11 August 2016.
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Bullock, O. (2018). The Successful Prose Poem Leaves Behind Its Name. In: Monson, J. (eds) British Prose Poetry. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77863-1_14
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