*bites used here as a noun
These quotes and fragments are part of a compendium-in-progress.
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A partial glossary of nomenclature: Anecdotes, aphorisms, apothegms, Briefs, brief essays, Casos, crônicas, Definitions, Denkbilder, Espresso stories, extracts, Fables, fantasies, feuilletons, ficciones relámpagos, figures, flash fiction, fragments, Gnomes, greguerías, Hint fiction, Ideas, idylls, instructions, Jottings, Kurzprosa, Lists, lyrical essays, Maxims, microcosmography, microcuentos, microfiction, microstories, monostichs, Nanofiction, napkin stories, notes, Ocherks, ouroboric novels, Parables, paragraphs, pensées, prosa d’arte, prose poems, Quick fiction, Reflections, Sentences, shorts, short-short stories, situations, sketches, sudden fiction, Tableaus, tales, transmutations, tropisms, twitterfiction, Utterances, Very short stories, Vignettes, Wuyun-shi, Xtremely short stories,Can someone get me an X and Y?, Zuihitsu
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“The prose poem is a funny fish-fowl…. I rather think that the special freedom that the prose poem has, and its special charm, is its quickness. When a prose poem takes a little time to read, rather than being able to read right through, that time has got to be meaningful to the poem, such as the sense of time passing. Otherwise, again, it gets heavily with prose. Of course I am talking about my notion of the ideal prose poem, the kind of prose poem I would like to write. Anyway, at the heart of the prose poem, no matter how one does them, is IMAGINATION and INVENTION; the surprise that prose can do some of the things it is made to do, and that the mind of so spooky.”
— Russell Edson
(from a July, 1974, letter to AZ)
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Prose poems can be quick, which is not to say rushed. A person who is rushed is often careless and forgetful of details. The race goes to the swift who stay on their feet. But if you do fall—fall gloriously.
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An anecdote that transcends through language or narrative can become a vignette. A transcendent vignette can become a prose poem. What does it need? Mojo, that’s what.
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“And if, as I suggest, such an arrangement of imagery requires just as much fundamental brainwork as the arrangement of an argument, it is to be expected that the reader of a prose poem should take at least as much trouble as a barrister reading an important decision on a complicated case.”
—T.S. Eliot
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Sei Shönagon lived in Japan from 966-1017 (she would have been able to blog about the Y1K scare). Her famed Pillow Book came about because she “had a vast quantity of paper at my disposal, and I set about filling the notebooks with odd facts, stories from the past, and all sorts of other things, often including the most trivial material.” Sounds like a blog. Written in private (“I wrote these notes at home, when I had a good deal of time to myself and thought no one would notice what I was doing”), her notebooks became public and soon everyone knew what she was doing. This form came to be known as zuihitsu (discussed in Kimiko Hahn’s piece “Compass,” included in Short).
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Native Americans kept “blogs” known as Winter Counts. Tribe historians would depict a significant event for each year on a buffalo or deer skin. The story behind each pictograph would be passed along verbally, and sometimes written down. (1887: The Winter of Night Issue. The Sioux, enraged by the government’s refusal to issue clothing until allotments of land had been accepted, threw Major Spencer, Agent, from his office. Demanding the warehouse keys from Yard Boss, Helver, the chiefs entered and issued the clothing at night.)
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Notes and Queries—a London weekly founded in 1849 (a version is still being published)—functioned as a kind of newsgroup for “literary men, artists, antiquaries, genealogists, etc.” Their motto was provided by Dickens via Captain Cuttle: “When found, make a note of,” to which the editors appended “till then make a QUERY.” Each issue featured scores of brief notes from readers, as well as queries that might get answered in subsequent issues.
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Perhaps the first electronic blogger was Will Rogers, who—from 1926 to 1935—submitted short newspaper pieces via telegram from wherever he happened to be: LONDON, Aug. 25.—France is very quiet. The rise in taxes was only proposed. Deer season opened in Scotland for all those who can’t hit grouse. Debts and dictators quiet today. Rogers often composed quickly and submitted his copy unedited.
Writers have long been attracted to tweet-sized pieces. In 1894, the Russian Valery Bryusov wrote a poem that could fit in a tweet (with many characters to spare): Oh, cover your pale legs. This inspired Apollinaire to revive the term “monostitch” for one-line poems, such as his 1914 “Chantre”: And the single string of the sea trumpets. Poet Bill Zavatsky edited an issue of Roy Rogers devoted to one-line poems (the previous—and only other—issue was devoted to poems about Roy Rogers). Allen Ginsberg took a stab at formulating an “American haiku,” which he called “the American Sentence”: 17 syllables, no linebreaks: “Taxi ghosts at dusk pass Monoprix in Paris 20 years ago”; “Put on my tie in a taxi, short of breath, rushing to meditate.”
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In painting, a small canvas doesn’t necessarily mean a small picture (landscapes on grains of rice), but when a painter chooses a small canvas, there is no turning back (other than abandonment), while a writer can start out thinking small and wind up writing big (or vice versa).
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While writing a screenplay, I was advised to get into each scene as late as possible, and get out no more than a hair longer than too soon. Same for shorts. The length of a short should be the equivalent of the 90-feet between home plate and first base: a foot in either direction would ruin the game.
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The need for newspapers to fill nooks and crannies of available space with ink (content following form) lead to the publication of aptly-named “fillers.” Starting in 1906, writing for Le Matin, Félix Fénéon (who had helped prepare Rimbaud’s Illuminations for publication)raised filler to an art through his faits divers en trois lignes(literally translated as various facts in three lines but given its literary due by Luc Sante’s translation as Novels in Three Lines), in which he distilled crime stories to three lines of newsprint.
Inspired by the Fénéon/Sante book, novelist Teju Cole has published faits divers on his Twitter feed, such as these based on articles from his native Nigeria: “In Ikotun, Mrs Ojo, who was terrified of armed robbers, died in her barricaded home, of smoke inhalation”; “Cholera, a bus crash, and terrorists, have killed 30, 21, and 10, in Adamawa, Ondo, and Borno, respectively”; “Scoop, scoop, scoop, spark. Four of those who were collecting petrol from a damaged tanker in Benue died right there.”
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It is 1875, and “a little gentleman with a huge portfolio under his arm,” is wandering the streets of London looking for the home of poet and critic Algernon Swinburne, intent on discussing their shared admiration for Edgar Allan Poe. The “little gentleman” is Stéphane Mallarmé, and in his portfolio is his translation of “The Raven” with illustrations by his dear friend Eduoard Manet.
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“He told me once that as a young man he had contemplated writing a long dynastic novel encompassing the history of Argentina since independence, until he realized that he could write, in the span of a few pages, a descriptive review of just such a work by an invented author, adding his reflections on the genre.”
—Alistair Reid, on Borges
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“Mallarmé’s reception room was so small that a company of fifteen persons filled it. Yet, to this little room, containing nothing but a centre table and chairs, came the intellectual youth of France…. To see him stand by the fireplace rolling a cigarette, in a low voice, half to himself, half to his visitors, was to see a man free from conventional bondage….Any one coming here with the airs of a patron would, in a few moments, settle down in his seat, subdued, transformed by the serenity of the place. Once I witnessed the arrival of an obstreperous visitor; but Mallarmé, with his usual easy manner, let silence bring about subjugation. When he tried to lead the conversation the host allowed him to talk for a time, then, turning to M. Henri de Régnier, sitting in the corner by the fireside, he addressed him in an undertone, thus adroitly shifting the loud talker to one side.”
— Francis Grierson
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"Orgy is not the sister of inspiration; inspiration is absolutely the sister of daily effort."
—Baudelaire
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Rimbaud and Baudelaire are unindicted co-conspirators in a 1969 Dragnet episode titled “Homicide: The Student.”
Suspect’s Aunt: I never taught him to read trash like that as God is my judge I didn’t.
Sergeant Friday: What kind of trash is that, Miss Beal.
Suspect’s Aunt: Flowers of Evil, that’s what it is. Baudelaire. You should hear him spout that stuff. It’s profane if you ask me. Enough to drive the Lord right out of this house.
Suspect: Aunt Ada thinks that all literature stops with the Bible. Anything else is blasphemous. Are you cops?
Sergeant Friday: Jeff Buckram?
Suspect: That’s right. What have I done? Did Aunt Ada turn me in for reading Baudelaire?
Sergeant Friday: You weren’t at work yesterday morning, Jeff? You mind telling us where you were.
Suspect: Right here in my room. With my friend Flaubert.
Sergeant Friday: Flaubert?
Suspect’s Aunt: Oh, yes: FLOW BEAR. It’s another one of them Flowers of Evil…
Suspect: You know Flaubert, officer?
Sergeant Friday: A passing acquaintance.
Suspect: Well, this is where I was all day yesterday. Right here. Deep in the cesspools of French literature.
Suspect’s Would-Be Girlfriend: He recites poetry sometimes. Although I admit it’s pretty gloomy stuff. You know, Baudelaire, Rimbaud. That stuff. We met in English lit. He isn’t too bad looking, and he seemed so intellectual.
Suspect: “I’ve been patient too long / My memory is dead / All fears and all wrongs / To the heavens have fled / While all my veins burst / With a sickly thirst.” That’s Rimbaud, officer.
Sergeant Friday: And these are your rights. Listen to ‘em.
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Rimbaud and Baudelaire are also invoked in a 2003 episode of Law and Order titled “Genius.”
Librarian: Verlaine was the real talent, you know. Rimbaud just latched onto his coattails and wouldn’t let go.
Detective Briscoe: We were just saying that on the way over here.
Librarian: He shot him.
Detective Briscoe: Who shot who?
Librarian: Verlaine popped Rimbaud. Paul loved Arthur. Paul also loved Matilda. It was a whole mess. The French—what do you expect?.... If you really want decadent, I’d stick with Baudelaire.
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Tweeting during social upheavals was foreshadowed during the German occupation of Paris. With print shops under surveillance, Jean Paulhan wrote poems on “bits of scrap paper that he would leave on café tables, in the streets, or at post office counters.” Rene Char also wrote (but didn’t distribute) notes, which were published after the war as Leaves of Hypnos (which was Char’s code name during the Resistance): “Flood with sunlight the imagination of those who stammer instead of speaking, who blush in the instant of assertion. They are steadfast partisans”; “At all the meals we take in common, we invite freedom to sit down. The chair remains empty, but the place continues to be set.”
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Two letters from Rimbaud:
Charleville, May 15, 1871 (to Paul Demeny)
“The Poet makes himself into a seer by a long, involved and logical derangement of all the senses. Every kind of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself; he exhausts every possible poison so that only essence remains….The poet is really a thief of fire. Humanity, and even the animals,are his burden; he must make sure his inventions live and breathe….You’d be a son-of-a-bitch not to respond: quickly: in a week I’ll be in Paris, maybe.
Harar, February 25, 1890
Dear Mother and Sister,
I got your letter of January 21, 1890.
Don’t be upset that I don’t write much; the main reason is simply that I never find anything interesting to say….What do you expect me to write about in a place like this? That I’m bored, that I’ve got problems, that I’m worn to pieces, that I’ve had it, but that I can’t get myself out of here, etc. etc.! That is all, absolutely all I can say, consequently, and since that’s no fun for others either, I do better by saying nothing.”….
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“Influence won Chamfort a good education, and at school and college he played the part of youthful prodigy in two ways; he carried off prizes and in the end was rusticated for writing lampoons on the professors. A few months’ nomad existence in Normandy with two other scapegraces followed, and then the prodigal returned, was forgiven and became an abbé.”
—William G. Hutherton
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While the concept of the twitter “novel” has less to do with form than with dosage (like the serialized novels of the 19th Century), microblogging does lend itself to self-contained but related units, such as John Wray’s “Citizen” stories, which have appeared on his twitter feed. (“When to stop working on my novel?” a passerby wondered aloud. “When you finally ‘find your voice’ and it sucks!” Citizen shouted.) Such short, stand-alone pieces connected with others by a voice, character, storyline, and/or theme are somewhat akin to daily comic strips—one of our most enduring short forms.
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Translating is never cut and dried. (If it were, the previous sentence would be translated into French as la traduction n’est pas coupe et sec.) The last phrase of Baudelaire’s “Dog and the Flask” (the title is also translated as “The Dog and the Vial” and “The Dog and the Scent Bottle” ) is des ordures soigneusement choisies, which has been translated as “carefully raked-up mire,” “dung, chosen with care,” “carefully chosen sweepings,” “carefully selected scraps of nastiness,” “carefully selected garbage,” “meticulously selected garbage,” and “carefully selected crap.” And in Baudelaire’s “The Stranger” (also translated as “The Foreigner”), one of the speakers uses the familiar tu and the other the formal vous. It is impossible to capture this in English, though a Spanish translator would have no problem.
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Richard Howard—one of our greatest translators—tells of a conversation he had with Roland Barthes’ mother, who asked,“What would you say the translator needs ... oh, not to translate someone like my son’s books, but as a general rule?” Before Richard could answer, Madame Barthes continued: “I always hear people say a talent for languages, but I don’t think so.... Isn’t it rather that what the translator needs is talent?”
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“I want constantly to push out into experimental fields. ‘What can be done in prose that has not been done?’ I keep asking myself.
And so I constantly set out on new roads.
What is gained?—perhaps nothing but a little colorful strength in my everyday writing. I push on, knowing that no one will perhaps care in the least for these experiments into which I put so much emotional force.”
—Sherwood Anderson
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