Prose Poems and You (by You I mean me)

Prose poems have been something I never even considered until college. My senior year, when I and a few other undergrad "poets" bullied our way into Charlie Simic's Advanced Workshop class full of grad students, we were handed a copy of "Great American Prose Poems" and told to read up (among a few other Simic classic quips - post will be forthcoming, that class was hilarious). If you haven't noticed, I can be a little oblivious to the greater poetic community, so little did I know before reading up on my new teacher that he had won a Pulitzer for prose poetry in The World Doesn't End. Needless to say our classes were filled with many bad prose poems (and a couple good ones), and I never really dabbled in the form until a couple years ago (more on that later). 
     Then yesterday, while reading what has become my favorite poetry rag, HTMLGIANT, I came across this introduction to John Olson which has stuck with me enough to explore a little further. 





     One, that's a great introduction, heartfelt, that got me pumped for the poems that followed. 
     Two, a quote to pull:

"Prose [poetry]is a form that can withstand a lot of torque, a lot of pitch and shifts in mood...It can also be one of the easiest forms to abuse." 

     This is really nothing new. Even back in that class, my 18-year-old introverted self could distinguish abuse, what was prose that strived for successfully for something poetic and what was inattentiveness, naiveness or laziness disguised as prose poetry (I could dig out some examples, but then in fairness I'd have to also post my own writing from that class, and I am not ready to be embarrassed). Downing also states that many younger poets, in an academic setting especially and himself included, gravitate towards prose poetry. It took me a little longer. For a year or so, the book of prose poems sat without as much as a glance. Poems were comprised of lines, I was convinced, and had no reason to explore possibilities otherwise. 
     A few years ago, I opened up GAPP and started seeing what exactly my classmates were trying to emulate. Slugging through formal lined poetry for years, I was refreshed by reading prose poetry.  Lined poetry is that much more intense, like reading a block of text with a magnifying glass not entirely under your control.  Every decision is magnified, questioned. There is an architect clearly at work, and you might not like what (s)he is building. Conversely, a block of prose allows for some discontinuity in sentence structure, rhythm and mood to coexist without necessarily calling much attention to themselves. As a reader you are given more freedom/responsibility to find your own way into prose poems, and I like that. It allows me to approach the poem from my own pace.
     After reading and enjoying many examples from the collection (and I really suggest picking up a copy, some good stuff from Tate, Simic, Strand and Edson to Lyn Heijinian, to Anne Carson to Joe Wenderoth etc etc... Plus, Lehman's essay on prose poetry is pretty informative to my understanding of the genre), I found my poetry was too abstract and diffuse. To quote Healing Dreams "You have been living on the outer shell of your being -- the way out is the way in." My writing did just that. I jumped from image to image in an inattentive way, leaving major gaps in detail and narrative that skirted the emotional core of the poem. It was here that prose poetry possibly saved my writing (at least for myself).
     Because what Downing didn't mention (and perhaps he didn't need to) is that the prose form, being so malleable, makes a great place for experimentation. In his intro/essay Lehman states "[the prose poem] offers the enchantment of escape whether from the invisible chains of the superego or from the oppressive reign of the Alexandrine line." I have tried to do both. It was in prose poems that I was able to discover the sense of what was poetic, finding where a sentence or fragment crossed the line from regular prose to poetry without fear of recourse. If a poem didn't work, it wasn't because of a misused line break, it was determined by the quality of the writing.  By forcing the sentences together, prose poems forced a continuity of thought, helping hone a poem's logic more directly by forcing me to explain why X is related to Y in one or two statements. 
     I played with fables, myths, aphorisms, then the pull of images and deep images. .  Freeing myself from the bounds of line allowed for me to explore excesses of vision and yes, surrealism. And hell if the form (and discovering what some of the great writers I mention above have done with the form) hasn't brought love of poetry back to me. 
     And that's not to say that I'm going to be writing prose poems exclusively, or that I'm going to outgrow the genre. I often find myself beginning in prose form and then breaking the lines deliberately afterwards. There can be a tendency for my prose poems to be thick and static. Breaking lines can help create more rhythm and add energy that supports, or sometimes conflicts, with the imagery. 
     To think of it another way:

The prose poem is a thicket, where everything subconscious dwells hidden from civilized view. Every time you enter it's an adventure where anything is possible and you are surrounded by noise, flashes of vision, activity. You can stay there, carve a little home for yourself there, live there all you like. And if/when you step out of the brambles to peek at the town/city of lined poetry, you can appreciate the architecture that much more.