OCA preloader logo
What Is Prose Poetry? - The Open College of the Arts

To find out more details about the transfer to The Open University see A New Chapter for OCA.

What Is Prose Poetry? thumb

What Is Prose Poetry?

The name itself is surely a contradiction in terms – how can a poem be ‘prose’, when ‘prose’ is the very word used to describe writing that’s not poetry?
The simplest way to define prose poetry is to say it’s poetry written without line breaks. Many prose poems look like short paragraphs, so some writers have suggested that prose poetry is essentially the same form as flash fiction (which I blogged about here). I’m not convinced the two forms are exactly the same, but I admit the difference can be difficult to pin down.
The form is thought to originate (in the Western tradition, at least) with the nineteenth century French poets, Aloysius Bertrand and Charles Baudelaire. Two of the better known books of prose poetry are Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons (1914) and Francis Ponge’s Le parti pris des choses (The Voice of Things) (1942). Both writers use the form to focus on small, everyday objects, including oranges, snails and cigarettes. Perhaps the compactness of the form suits a narrow focus – there’s certainly a humility to the form which attracts some writers.
‘But it’s not poetry!’ I hear you say, and you’d not be the first to voice this view. In 1978, the prestigious American prize, the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, was going to be awarded to Mark Strand for his book of prose poems, The Monument, but the decision was overturned because prose poems weren’t thought to be poetry. However, things change fast and in 1990 the Pulitzer was awarded to Charles Simic for his book of (mostly) prose poems, The World Doesn’t End.
Now many poets are writing prose poems, sometimes publishing collections entirely written in the form, sometimes using prose poetry as one of many forms, for example the poet Claudia Rankine in her much acclaimed Citizen: An American Lyric (Penguin UK, 2015).
But why would a poet want to ignore one of the most important tools in their toolkit – the line break? After all, writing in lines opens up many possibilities: it allows the poet to separate ideas and structure their work. Varying line length offers a way of controlling the pace of a poem. Using lines means a poet can write in particular rhythmical forms such as iambic pentameter, and lines also mean that fixed rhyme schemes are an option. Further, since the word at the end of each line is given more attention by the reader, writing in lines gives the poet greater control about where a reader places emphasis when reading a poem.
A prose poem removes these possibilities, so why write one? Poets are rebellious creatures (so they like to think!) and I wonder if there’s a feeling of ‘Why not?’
Some argue that a prose poem is still a poem because it makes use of other poetic techniques, including imagery, metaphor, alliteration and assonance, compression and rhythm. But many prose writers use these techniques too, they’re not unique to poetry.
Perhaps it’s a matter of the writer’s intention – did she set out to write a piece of flash fiction or a prose poem? I’d like to suggest that a prose poem is written with the awareness of what a poem is, and this idea of the poem is held in tension in the writer’s mind. This is what distinguishes prose poetry from flash fiction for me, but I admit it’s not something that’s necessarily apparent in the work itself. If the reader can’t tell, then perhaps the difference is relevant only to the writer.
If you’d like to try writing a prose poem yourself, read a few examples online and then choose a subject – it can be as epic or as modest as you like (fruit seems to be popular!) and sketch out a few notes. If you decide the piece wants to be a lineated poem, then follow your instinct – but hopefully you’ll return to writing poetry with a better sense of what a line break can offer.
There are now many anthologies of prose poetry available, and acceptance of the form is growing. Perhaps not everybody will be convinced by it, but I’m never sorry when writers explore the boundaries of literary form and try something new. After all, why not?
This Line is Not for Turning (ed.) Jane Monson (Cinnamon Press, 2015)
Great American Prose Poems (ed.) David Lehman (Simon & Schuster, 2003)
The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Prose Poetry (eds) Gary L. McDowell and F. Daniel Rzicznek (Rose Metal Press, 2010)
Image Credit: Agricultural Research Service, US Dept of Agriculture.


Posted by author: Vicky MacKenzie

8 thoughts on “What Is Prose Poetry?

  • Vahni Capildeo writes prose poems in her book ‘Measures of Expatriation’. I wrestled with whether it was poetry and came to the conclusion it is because of the intensity of expression, as well as the things you list. Also it works as part of a themed book. You could say Shakespeare started it with the speech’ What a piece of work is a man….’

  • Hi Jane, thanks for your comment. I’ve not read Capildeo’s book yet but have heard lots of good things. Prose poetry seems to be one of those things that once you’re aware of it, you see it everywhere! And if it’s good enough for Shakespeare…

  • I’m always convinced that a prose poem still follows the tenor of what a poem wants to do (raise emotion, describe a thought, etc) while flash fiction needs to follow the basic rules of fiction (be about a character and have movement along a narrative arc. I’d love to know your thoughts on that Vicky. What do you think?

  • Hi Nina, thanks for your comment! This is a good point. I think everyone has their own ideas about what they want a poem or piece of fiction to do. Poems can also be about a character or describe a narrative arc, and similarly a short piece of fiction can capture a moment or an emotion. I really enjoy works that disrupt definitions and the boundaries of their forms. Both prose poetry and flash fiction occupy the space between poetry and fiction, and for me it’s this slipperiness which makes them so interesting!

  • Useful ideas here, Vicky. And it’s well worth encouraging students to try out prose poetry even they eventually return to line breaks. I wonder if one of the main differences between a prose poem and flash fiction lies more in context and subject matter than in form. A prose poem may simply catch a moment in time, a bit like a photograph, or a poem with lines, while flash fiction is more likely to have a story arc with characters in conflict, situations and events.
    But as we know, there are no hard and fast rules.

  • Just to say I commented on Vicky’s piece before I saw Nina’s and Vicky’s reply to Nina which is why Nina and I made similar comments. But slipperiness is a great quality in all forms and genres.

  • There’s a stream of consciousness in prose poems that, to my mind, works quickly and with less effort than writing a line-break poem. I like its compactness of creative expression.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Back to blog listings