Comic books are filled with the transformed, people and animals remade to arise as a new creation – usually the result of someone's not-so-benign tinkering. These mutants occupy a no man's land between the possible, and the improbable. Much like prose poems.
What is a prose poem? After much reading, research and angsting over this seemingly simple question, I've made my decision.
Damned if I know.
A form unto themselves, prose poems don't like to be constrained by little things like rules and regulations. The only non-negotiable I could get a consensus on was that prose poems generally don't use line breaks.
Encyclopedia Britannica had this to say about prose poems: "a work in prose that has some of the technical or literary qualities of a poem (such as regular rhythm, definitely patterned structure, or emotional or imaginative heightening) but that is set on a page as prose."
Prose poems aren't about fitting between boundaries, but about poking at those restrictions with a pointy stick. If I had to sneak up and assign characteristics to prose poems without getting caught, I would say they should have internal cohesiveness, possibilities contained in the rhythm and word choice, and a way of approaching language that isn't ordinarily seen in prose. Where poems are made of lines, prose poems build upon sentences. Where poem forms like a sonnet or villanelle can be a form of beach front posturing, a prose poem is often the Incredible Hulk, flexing out of conventional clothing without a thought to propriety.
Like mutants, prose poems aren't quite normal – which leaves us a bit afraid of their potential. Straddling fine-line limitations, prose poems jump into unknown territory and shake up our traditional verse expectations. Don't hate them because they're troublemakers, after all, a long time ago, in a country across the ocean, a sestina was once a monster too.
Forever
by David Ignatow
I do know that birds continue to live and procreate as long as the weather is amenable and the food there—as if it were a deal between them, the weather and the crops. No questions asked. And the birds are in earnest about it, as I am in earnest about finding a reason for their lives, for what reason I myself do not understand. So I too in my way am ignorant of myself, my purpose, to perform simply the role of questioner.
If I were to say that it is because I want to know, I will again surely be carrying out my function of questioner, as the birds carry out theirs of eating and procreating.
I must call it good because to deny it is not one of my functions, or is it? And here I am asking a question once again, carrying out the function I have been assigned.
Meditation is its name, to meditate on practically nothing and to find something to say about it, this that I have written, its own purpose in being, for the sake of living with questions forever.
.
27 May 2009
23 May 2009
Weekend Wandering
I'm venturing outside the Periphery for a few days. Been a while since I escaped the cozy confines of my square state. (I don't count slipping over the border into Montana or South Dakota to buy yarn as being 'outside' the Periphery, since it involves sheep.)
Everyone have a good weekend, and try to stay out of trouble - I'm looking at you, Anonymous.
My Memorial Day will be spent here:
Watching this:
I know, I know, I haven't blogged much on my baseball obsession - consider yourselves informed. Or shocked and appalled. Or indifferent and waiting for football season.
Someday we'll explore my rather weighty baseball card collection, and all the reasons wearing a N.Y. Yankees hat in Wyoming is
Not A Good Idea.
.
Everyone have a good weekend, and try to stay out of trouble - I'm looking at you, Anonymous.
My Memorial Day will be spent here:
Watching this:
I know, I know, I haven't blogged much on my baseball obsession - consider yourselves informed. Or shocked and appalled. Or indifferent and waiting for football season.
Someday we'll explore my rather weighty baseball card collection, and all the reasons wearing a N.Y. Yankees hat in Wyoming is
Not A Good Idea.
.
22 May 2009
Birthday Boys
No, it's not another Corgi post. This one is birthday wishes for two May 22nd boys, my brother, Anonymous, and my eldest child, Son One.
Born on the same day, 32 years apart, they share an awful lot in common.
Exhibit AA - Son One
Kind of scary, huh? Of course Son One has longer hair now, and a fixation on musical instruments: Here he's working on staining the body of his latest electric guitar for his coursework at Roberto Venn School of Luthiery.
Since I don't have any recent pictures of Anonymous, you'll have to pretend the awesome extended fork, banana seat with spoiler bike in this picture is his BMW motorcycle. (Ignore the girl on the right, her bike was fairly utilitarian . . .)
More commonalities - Anonymous makes a living playing with electricity, and wiring things to be loud and/or bright.
Son One wires up an electric guitar, because after all, max decibels would make his uncle proud.
A last pic of Anonymous, because I can, and because he looked so thrilled to be standing out in the backyard, by a cornfield, getting his picture taken with his dorky little sister.
Happy Birthday, Anonymous Bro.
.
Born on the same day, 32 years apart, they share an awful lot in common.
Exhibit A - Anonymous
Exhibit AA - Son One
Kind of scary, huh? Of course Son One has longer hair now, and a fixation on musical instruments: Here he's working on staining the body of his latest electric guitar for his coursework at Roberto Venn School of Luthiery.
Since I don't have any recent pictures of Anonymous, you'll have to pretend the awesome extended fork, banana seat with spoiler bike in this picture is his BMW motorcycle. (Ignore the girl on the right, her bike was fairly utilitarian . . .)
More commonalities - Anonymous makes a living playing with electricity, and wiring things to be loud and/or bright.
Son One wires up an electric guitar, because after all, max decibels would make his uncle proud.
A last pic of Anonymous, because I can, and because he looked so thrilled to be standing out in the backyard, by a cornfield, getting his picture taken with his dorky little sister.
Happy Birthday, Anonymous Bro.
.
10 May 2009
Corgipalooza!
For those of you that complained that April was Corgi-Lite, here you go.
We want to play ball . . . Now!
On your mark . . .
Get set!
Go!
Using Corgi Mind Tricks: Pick up the ball. Throw the ball.
Corgi Mind Tricks 2: I wonder when she's going to throw the-Hey, look, a bird!
And over there, another bird!
Is that the UPS man up the street?
No, it's not the UPS man, and I have the ball, bro. Pay Attention!
I'm sure if I just wink at her, she'll give me the ball.
You use your cute, I'll use mine . . .
Okay, okay, we'll double dose her with cute. That ought to be good for another 20 minutes of fetch the wild tennis ball.03 May 2009
What I Learned From The April Poem A Day Challenge
Robert Lee Brewer (no relation) from Writer's Digest Poetic Asides put out the call in March, challenging poets to join him in writing a poem a day for April, National Poetry Month. At first I thought Nope, I can't do that. I like to craft my poems by some elaborate and Byzantine system stretched out over weeks, if not months. . . which is precisely the reason I needed to do the Poem A Day Challenge. I was getting too fussy, and every now and then I suspected I'd revised the life out of a poem. Could I learn to write more quickly, and still craft a poem I would be happy with? Could I write to a specific prompt, and develop a poem around someone else's vision that would still satisfy me? April would be a good month to find out.
Of course the second problem is having the discipline to actually focus and write a new poem every day - which meant no cheating and using stuff from my fragment file - (lines, titles, partially written poems, things needing a major overhaul). The only cheating I would do--reading the prompt from work if the daily prompt was posted past 7:00 am (the site is not blocked by the IT minions, hallelujah. Poetry is not on their hit list, I guess) and maybe working on the poem during lunch or breaks, and posting it. I managed to do that the first two days, by posting poems I was not completely happy with, but were finished enough that I didn't cringe when I looked at them.
By day three I realized I could look at the prompt in the morning, think about it all day, perhaps jot down notes or write a quick version of the poem I had in mind. What I discovered was the 'percolating' time is critical to my process. When I got home after work and swimming I had 5 hours until midnight to put something together, get it posted and still make my goal of doing a new poem every day. The poems seemed to come a bit quicker if I let the ideas bounce around in my head all day. Even when I thought I had a theme and the poem plotted out sometimes when I sat down to write the poem would refuse to form the way I envisioned it and insist on becoming something else.
It took me a good week to realize my brain knew what it was doing. I need to let go and trust that background, experience, and 'percolation' would come together and produce a poem. I needed to have faith. I also needed to allow myself to write a poem that wasn't quite up to my usual standards, and post it on Poetic Asides and my blog for the world to see. Then live with it. Posting didn't mean I couldn't go back later, rewrite, tidy up, rearrange. I made another rule for myself. No poetic housekeeping until after May 1. I would live with the poems posted as is until then.
As the month went I discovered a new way of working. Previously, I would have a line or two spring to mine, or maybe a title for a poem that summed up what I needed to write about. Now I was working from the opposite end, having a subject or theme and needing to craft the lines around it. I think the reversal of process helped me to get some poems that wouldn't have come about any other way. Strangely enough, prompts that looked impossible by the morning were ones that produced some of my favorite poems. The prompts that were wide open – color, for example – I had the most problem with. I wasn't happy with anything I came up with there. Choosing a favorite color was like choosing a favorite child, and writing about him over his sibling. One of the prompts involved taking the title of a famous poem, changing it, and rewriting it. Or making your own version. I choice to rewrite, attempting to capture the voice of Allen Ginsberg as I rewrote Howl to Foul, complete with zombies. Not all of the prompts produced excitement, but I muddled through and produced a poem, which was my objective. A side benefit—I can write a blog post a day about a poem, when necessary.
Looking over the month, I see reoccurring themes pop up in my work, ideas, words, phrases. So I've also learned that I can produce a coherent body of work, and quite possibly I can write a chapbook's worth of poems centered around a theme. Before the Poem A Day Challenge, that seemed impossible, now it seems doable.
I learned my poetry doesn't have to be limited to being written at certain times, I learned I can, under pressure, produce poems, and sometimes even produce poems that I like. I learned to trust in myself, to trust the process, to let go and let someone else dictate what type of poem to write. I've gotten excited about the process of writing poetry all over again, an added bonus. Did I write a poem on May 1? Nope. But I began to craft my own prompts for a series of poems on a theme, I looked at what I'd written with an eye towards revision, and I stopped to read and enjoy other people's poetry from the Challenge. It was worth the time and effort I put in. If I only wrote poetry, I would be tempted to incorporate a lot of 'challenges' to my everyday schedule. I am looking for ways to incorporate what I learned into the writing of the novels and short stories. The best lesson I should take from doing the Poem A Day Challenge, is simple. Trust myself, and the words will come.
.
Of course the second problem is having the discipline to actually focus and write a new poem every day - which meant no cheating and using stuff from my fragment file - (lines, titles, partially written poems, things needing a major overhaul). The only cheating I would do--reading the prompt from work if the daily prompt was posted past 7:00 am (the site is not blocked by the IT minions, hallelujah. Poetry is not on their hit list, I guess) and maybe working on the poem during lunch or breaks, and posting it. I managed to do that the first two days, by posting poems I was not completely happy with, but were finished enough that I didn't cringe when I looked at them.
By day three I realized I could look at the prompt in the morning, think about it all day, perhaps jot down notes or write a quick version of the poem I had in mind. What I discovered was the 'percolating' time is critical to my process. When I got home after work and swimming I had 5 hours until midnight to put something together, get it posted and still make my goal of doing a new poem every day. The poems seemed to come a bit quicker if I let the ideas bounce around in my head all day. Even when I thought I had a theme and the poem plotted out sometimes when I sat down to write the poem would refuse to form the way I envisioned it and insist on becoming something else.
It took me a good week to realize my brain knew what it was doing. I need to let go and trust that background, experience, and 'percolation' would come together and produce a poem. I needed to have faith. I also needed to allow myself to write a poem that wasn't quite up to my usual standards, and post it on Poetic Asides and my blog for the world to see. Then live with it. Posting didn't mean I couldn't go back later, rewrite, tidy up, rearrange. I made another rule for myself. No poetic housekeeping until after May 1. I would live with the poems posted as is until then.
As the month went I discovered a new way of working. Previously, I would have a line or two spring to mine, or maybe a title for a poem that summed up what I needed to write about. Now I was working from the opposite end, having a subject or theme and needing to craft the lines around it. I think the reversal of process helped me to get some poems that wouldn't have come about any other way. Strangely enough, prompts that looked impossible by the morning were ones that produced some of my favorite poems. The prompts that were wide open – color, for example – I had the most problem with. I wasn't happy with anything I came up with there. Choosing a favorite color was like choosing a favorite child, and writing about him over his sibling. One of the prompts involved taking the title of a famous poem, changing it, and rewriting it. Or making your own version. I choice to rewrite, attempting to capture the voice of Allen Ginsberg as I rewrote Howl to Foul, complete with zombies. Not all of the prompts produced excitement, but I muddled through and produced a poem, which was my objective. A side benefit—I can write a blog post a day about a poem, when necessary.
Looking over the month, I see reoccurring themes pop up in my work, ideas, words, phrases. So I've also learned that I can produce a coherent body of work, and quite possibly I can write a chapbook's worth of poems centered around a theme. Before the Poem A Day Challenge, that seemed impossible, now it seems doable.
I learned my poetry doesn't have to be limited to being written at certain times, I learned I can, under pressure, produce poems, and sometimes even produce poems that I like. I learned to trust in myself, to trust the process, to let go and let someone else dictate what type of poem to write. I've gotten excited about the process of writing poetry all over again, an added bonus. Did I write a poem on May 1? Nope. But I began to craft my own prompts for a series of poems on a theme, I looked at what I'd written with an eye towards revision, and I stopped to read and enjoy other people's poetry from the Challenge. It was worth the time and effort I put in. If I only wrote poetry, I would be tempted to incorporate a lot of 'challenges' to my everyday schedule. I am looking for ways to incorporate what I learned into the writing of the novels and short stories. The best lesson I should take from doing the Poem A Day Challenge, is simple. Trust myself, and the words will come.
.
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