It’s not just content out of context that creates the character of many of the poems in An Introduction to the Prose Poem. Jorie Graham gets further into this idea in her introduction to The Best American Poetry, 1990, a book she edited that year with David Lehman. In writing about the seven prose poems that were selected for inclusion, Graham noted that
One important formal development is the recent popularity of prose poems. We might think of them as, perhaps, the frontal approach; they are certainly—in many cases—the most extreme in their attempt to use the strategies of “normal” articulate speech to reach the reader. Their number, variety and sheer quality (and the extraordinarily different uses to which the form is put) caused me to think of this volume as, in part, a subterranean exploration of the form. (Graham xxii)
While [Michel] Deville suggests to us the issue of content out of context in the form, Graham is additionally introducing, the idea that prose poems often adopt what she calls a frontal approach. She suggests that the prose poems are most extreme in their use of common speech—in grammatical orthodoxy. Graham muses on to suggest that, in some ways, that year’s volume of Best American Poems, was in part, a below-the-surface look at the burgeoning form. Time and again, the poems in An Introduction to the Prose Poem reveal this characteristic of possessing language that leans perceptibly and regularly into its content.
painting by Matisse
https://n2poetry.com/2011/12/27/a-look-at-prose-poetry-an-introduction-to-the-prose-poem-edited-by-brian-clements-and-jamey-dunham/
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