Prose Poem: Fact or Fiction (by Sally Ashton)

I thought I’d hop into a recent discussion begun here which proposed to consider the prose poem as a medium, a la Marshall McLuhan, rather than as a poetic form and was based on a quote to that effect made by Michael Hamburger. The rationale given in support of Hamburger’s charge was that by definition a medium is an extension of a human trait that by its expression changes or diminishes the original from which it sprang, and that “springing” has more to do with creating a means toward an end—freeing French verse-- rather than being an end in itself, the prose poem.

 By way of example, Hardy’s poem “Darkling Thrush” was offered. If one were to de-lineate this rhymed and metrical gem into a prose poem text block, the argument went, the poem no longer holds together; it loses its music and its power in the ensuing changes made to shape and reform it as a prose poem. I agree whole-heartedly on that count.

 However, the logical extension to thereby discredit the prose form seems dependent on a rather large subsequent leap. One might similarly offer a Rembrandt self-portrait alongside a Picasso self-portrait with similar effect.

 

Look what’s “lost” if we trade Rembrandt’s formal expression for Picasso’s, if Rembrandt were to have used Picasso’s looser brush stroke, or vice versa. Hamburger had compared poems by Baudelaire, both prose and verse, and found his prose poems lacking by comparison. But isn’t appreciating one tradition over another, or perhaps in this case one poet’s facility, finally more about personal taste than objective critical judgment of overall formal value? For instance, an earlier Picasso self-portrait:

 In the cases of painting and poetry, the medium according to McLuhan would be, well, the medium. Paint and necessary tools in the former case, shaped language in the latter. In both cases we might assume that the makers’ intentions are artistic expression. It is the vision, style, talent, and to large degree the artistic milieu that forms and reforms the differing expressions. I would argue that Hardy fulfilled his artistic intention in “The Darkling Thrush” through his formal choices within the medium of language, as did Rembrandt and Picasso within their medium of paint. To undo any of these artworks, to “amputate” them from their original expression and intent fails to provide a useful perspective of the medium.

Stephen Dobyns traces the evolution of the prose poem from its French beginnings in his essay, “Notes on Free Verse,” from Best Words, Best Order. I found especially illuminating his comparison of traditional metrical English verse which is based on a pattern of anticipation-verification-reward (think of the aural expectations created by dependable meter and rhyme) to non-metrical poetry in western verse now “freed” from such constraints. Such poetry employs instead a system of expectation-surprise, one far more dependent on a poet’s individual voice and breath (and far too oversimplified here, I'm afraid).

 If we’re going to take a view of the prose poem as a medium based on its service of removing the constraints of formal French verse, it would follow that free verse should also be considered a medium for its similar service to formal English verse. If so, I think its clear that both medium have by now firmly established themselves as poetic form in the evolution of contemporary English poetry. Dobyns further cites T.S. Eliot’s influence on the development of a “fundamentally English-based, anti-internationalist critical approach” as reason why prose poetry (as well as international poetry in translation) was largely ignored, therefore underdeveloped, by American poets from the early through mid-20^th century.

I agree an intriguing comparison is made by looking at poems in both forms from a single, accomplished author. What does his/her choice of lineation suggest in the poems side by side? Why do they choose what when? Why does Charles Simic or Amy Gerstler? Why does David Lehman? I offer a pair by James Wright, not the first name that comes to mind in the genre, but a poet who moved easily between verse and prose poem form. These two share similar imagery, I believe are from the same collection, and I think equally though differently moving.

Time

by James Wright

             Once with a weak ankle, I tried to walk. All I could do was spin slowly a step or two, and then sit down. There has to be some balance of things that move on the earth. But this morning a small tern is flying full of his strength over the Ionian Sea. From where I stand, he seems to have only one wing. There is either something wrong with my eyes in the sunlight or something unknown to me about the shadow that hangs broken from his left shoulder. But the shadow is no good to me now. He has dropped it into the sea. There has to be some balance of things that move on the earth. But he is not moving on the earth. Both of my ankles are strong. My hair is gray.

 

Petition to the Terns

 by James Wright

I have lived long enough to see

Many wings fall

And many others broken and driven

To stagger away on a slant

Of wind. It blows

Where it pleases to blow,

Or it poises,

Unaccountably,

At rest. Today, sails

Don’t move.

In the water,

In front of my eyes,

The huge dull scarlet men-of-war loll, uncaring and slobbish,

And stain

All the shore shallows

That men may hope to become

Green among.

The sea

Is already unfriendly,

The terns of Rhode Island

Dart up out of the cattails, pounce on the sunlight,

Claim it,

And attack.

They must be getting their own back,

Against the wind. But the wind is no angrier

Than any wing it blows down,

And I wish the terns would give it

And me a break.

(Sally Ashton)