Discussion → Poet and the prose writer

• 
  Darryl Price

  Apr 13, 09:52am

  
  

  Don't know why but this thought just crossed my mind:E.E.Cummings invented poetry. Emily Dickinson invented poetry. Walt Whitman invented poetry.They didn't copy poetry. They didn't accept limitations for its existence. They believed in poetry. They lived it. They witnessed.They pushed through poetry. They found more poetry than ever. They joined their hearts to it.Only after they were brave enough to do these things in the name of poetry were they called up as fine new examples.

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• 
  Kane X. Faucher

  Apr 14, 05:29am

  
  

  The visual aspect does bring to mind what is meant by the way we read. Espen J. Aarseth talks a great deal about trivial versus non-trivial reading (ergodic reading). The way the text is arranged indeed changes its aspect or bearing. I've seen attempts to turn existing prose into poetry - or, at least fragments - to fit within the given parameters of space, such as on Twitter or via cell phones.

  It also raises the question if we are not mostly predisposed to writing serially, and this a product of defaulting to rational organization no matter how "chaotic" we try to make text. Absurdist text can only go so long, for example, before it starts to organize itself according to some rational sequence of sense. We are not very capable of producing true randomness...Give a computer (which is capable of randomness) and a human the task of writing ones and zeroes, the result for the human turns out to be a visual representation/approximation of randomness: 110101000101. Give a computer the same task and part of the permutation may result in 16pp of ones in a row.

  Again, I wonder if the difference between poetry and prose, and this idea of visual presentation, has more to do with the cultural context by which we come to understand text (whether we accept it or not). The line breaks seem to signify, almost by reflex, "poem" (or perhaps grocery list!) while soft returns signify "prose". This may happen quite early on in our education where we are shown a poem and told it is a poem, and a poem has these particular qualities, etc. I'm not saying that's right, but that it does predispose or accustom us to consciously or unconsciously support the division between the two.

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• 
  eamon byrne

  Apr 18, 07:01am

  
  

  Yes, and Ann started this.

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• 
  Kane X. Faucher

  Apr 21, 09:03am

  
  

  Just as a reference, here is what Ezra Pound says of the matter (from How to Read or Why, p. 25):

  "The language of prose is much less highly charged, that is perhaps the only availing distinction between prose and poesy. Prose permits greater factual presentation, explicitness, but a much greater amount of language indeed."

  Now, of course, it would be unfair to launch against Pound, who wrote this in 1929, all the counterexamples that have arisen since to problematize his distinction. He was, of course, a devotee of imagism, and his own view of the highly charged poetry leans in favour of his view of phanopoeia (the impress of image upon the mind of the reader via an economy of words). Hence, as well, his fetishism for ideographic writing.

  I've encountered plenty of prose that is less adept at what Pound calls "factual presentation", and whether this would be in his eyes a failing of the technique of the prose artist, or an intentional feature that flouts this (almost dogmatic) imperative is up to the reader to decide. He phrases factual presentation here as if it is a duty, and indeed straight narrative does conform to the supplying of facts pertaining to the unfurling of plot such as description, character development, scene-setting, sequence of events, etc. Yet, we also find prose examples where this is simply not the case, and they may still be enjoyable regardless.

  One can see in this Pound snippet that he is vaguely uncomfortable drawing that line between poetry and prose. He begins with a universal statement, but modifies it with a "perhaps" that portrays the almost hopeless task of dividing the two forms with any absolute certainty. In essence, to say that prose is more dilute, and this due to imported facts to finesse the information end of the writing, may not hold in all cases.

  Some food for thought...

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• 
  L. R. Styles

  Dec 13, 09:51pm

  
  

  I've been a poet for 18 years and can say that --at least in my case--the lines penned are not spawned of love of the world but of things in it impressing the mind to the point where they must be written down. This impression can be favorable or unfavorable (i. e. wordsworth vs poe)

  I've also written non-fiction and fiction for ten years and whether or not a imaginary world is created or not depends entirely upon the writer, and each piece itself. In some cases I write about reality, but lately I've branched out into the nearly-purely fictional category.

  To attempt to lump such broad and varied categories under those two minuscule and flimsy umbrellas to me teeters on the precipice of The Ridiculous. An intere4sting question nonetheless, for it provided a break from prose creation, email and tweets alike.

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