When I think of prose poets from this country, the two names that come to mind are Russell Edson and Peter Johnson. Neither you nor Edson ever write (or wrote) in verse, and both of you have (or had) a lot to say about the prose poem. I’d love to hear you talk about your own work today, and about the new anthology, A Cast-Iron Airplane That Can Actually Fly, tomorrow.
How did you become a prose poet?
I’m the least likely candidate to be a prose poet. I had four years of French, nine of Latin, and five of Classical Greek. My Masters thesis was an introduction to and translation of the Psychomachia, a thousand-line Latin poem written by Marcus Aurelius Prudentius. With that background, I probably should be writing sonnets. So why the prose poem? For one thing, I was a terrible verse poet, mostly because I couldn’t have cared less about line breaks. But, of course, my situation was more complicated than that. Perhaps the best, and most concise, way to explain why I became a prose poet is to look at one of my early poems, called “The Millennium.”
The Millennium
In the basement, in the playroom, Ken’s throwing darts at another Ken while the flies of fairy tales nod off on a concrete wall, on a red plunger by the sink, on a lonesome cue ball. Upstairs, a pair of twins dancing on a hardwood floor, pushing tiny Santas in miniature baby strollers. I need help to sit down. “Next you’ll be wanting a back rub,” my brother says, then leaps from a coffee table, toppling our Christmas tree. Not enough bulbs to poke holes through this night’s black logic. No one strong enough to turn The Great Telescope, still partially unwrapped.
Four hours to midnight, my niece embracing her Sleepy-Time Barbie, eyelids set to close at the turn of the century.
“The Millennium” is the last poem in Pretty Happy!, my first volume of prose poetry. It changed everything for me. I’m very fond of Pretty Happy!, but, looking back, I see how haunted some of the poems were by other texts, such as, Kafka’s parables; Novalis’s short prose; the character sketches of the ancient Greek writer Theophrastus (whom I had translated in graduate school); and even things as silly as the “Fractured Fairy Tales” episodes from the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show and sketches from my beloved old copies of Mad magazine. Those influences were present long before I came to the oneiric landscapes of Charles Simic, Russell Edson, and Max Jacob. That’s not to say I didn’t have a voice or subject matter. I’m a mix of high and low cultures. I grew up in a working-class neighborhood near the steel plants in Buffalo, New York, but I went to a Jesuit high school where, as I said, I studied classical languages and was immersed in the Western Canon. It’s not surprising that in one of my later prose poems I have Socrates picking a booger from his nose while pontificating on father/son relationships. But how to the find the right way to express my high/low sensibility? How to find a style and form that was, well, “natural?”
And then “The Millennium” arrived.
Then “The Milleunium” arrived. That’s when your poems changed?
It was 1995 and I was back in Buffalo, sledding with my son on Christmas Eve as the world inched its way toward the Millennium. We were riding a sled made from plastic as thin and durable as cellophane. We went hurtling over a snowboarding hump, and upon landing, I heard a crack and felt a sharp pain in my back. A half an hour later I was in an emergency room with a number of drunks who had tumbled down the stairs at a Buffalo Bills football game. Three hours later, I was hauled off to Mercy Hospital. I needed no operation but was told if I fell down over the next month or two I would probably be paralyzed. So sitting on a couch in my mother’s living room, stoned on Darvocet and Valium, I took in my surroundings, grabbed my notebook, and decided to write some paragraphs. Many of the images and sounds were before or below me: my niece’s Barbie and Ken dolls, my mother’s artificial Christmas tree, the red plunger by the sink, a lonesome cue ball banging into another ball in the basement.
But then the “flies of fairy tales” appeared, and the poem became a bit more apocalyptic and improvisational, as images and dialogue, real and imagined, collided, with the soundtrack of the Smashing Pumpkins’s “Bullet with Butterfly Wings” providing background music from my portable CD player.
For once I never intruded on these images or sounds. Of course, the poem went through revisions, but the method, if that is an accurate word for letting one’s imagination roam and make unusual leaps and connections, was new and exciting for me. After “The Millennium” I felt comfortable with the poetic process, and most of the poems preceding it in the book were written after it.
And did the freedom of the prose poem allow me to make this leap? Of course. If I’m walking down the street on the way to a friend’s house, I have to stop at traffic lights or make turns. Isn’t that what verse poetry is? Isn’t that why it’s called verse, from the Latin verto, to turn. In contrast, the prose poem is like an open pasture where no direction is necessary. Where anything can happen. Where contradictions and juxtapositions (those odd leaps that often transcend logic) are not only welcome but expected—contradictions and juxtapositions that would become even wilder in my next few darkly comic collections.
Yes, I agree. I think the freedom that a prose poem offers seems exhilarating to many poets, especially young poets.
But this freedom comes at a very high price. I edited a prose-poem journal for nine years, and poem after poem was overwritten. “Too much language chasing too little of an idea,” as Russell Edson used to say. So much prose poetry now is nothing more than people thinking out loud about a variety of irrelevant topics. Very few surprises. Very few linguistic leaps, as if their thoughts are somehow significant because they are poets. These poets do not bring to the prose poem the same discipline they would demand from their verse poetry.
Everything I’ve worked toward in my prose poetry can be seen in my new book, Old Man Howling at the Moon. In it, we find a Grumpy Old Everyman, who is terribly angry that the old grand narratives he’s lived by are barely recognizable anymore. He’s a ranter and a raver. He’s outraged and often outrageous, and yet he can also be funny, and in spite of his grumpiness, the book ends with this prose poem called “Happy,” which suggests a bit of consolation.
Happy
Gentle Reader,
In spite of persistent rumors, let me assure you that I’m happy.
Happy as the Brazilian beauty in a red thong cavorting half-naked on the Travel Channel.
Happy as the local loony screaming at the same tree every morning, convinced it’s an enemy from a past life.
I’m happy I can say, “Don’t go away I’ve got the baddest poem right here in my back pocket,” and no one thinks I’m nuts.
Happy for artificial putting greens, yellow buses that swallow up children yet no one gets hurt.
Happy for tuna fish and the piano player at Nordstrom who asked me to sing along.
Crusty sand dunes, orchids, a solitary grayish cloud frozen in the sky―I’m happy for them.
Happy for the rust-colored bottom of a rap diva, for the ant-sized beauty mark on my wife’s bum.
Happy a sixty-six-year-old man can dance and play air guitar in his boxer shorts while his teenage son laughs himself silly.
Even happy for Plan A, though I’ll never understand it, and for the chance, no, pleasure, to spend a few idle moments inside this here ellipsis . . .
From Old Man Howling at the Moon (Madhat Press, 2018).
Peter Johnson’s most recent poetry titles are Old Man Howling at the Moon (Madhat Press, 2018) and A Cast-iron Aeroplane That Can Actually Fly: Commentaries from 80 Contemporary American Poets on Their Prose Poetry(Madhat, 2019). His prose poetry has received an NEA and the James Laughlin Award from The Academy of American Poets. See his other poetry and fiction at peterjohnsonauthor.com.
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