Fanny Bay Fat Oyster Prose Poetry Workshop 
 (thank you to Judy LeBlanc and the Fat Oyster Reading series for sponsoring this workshop.) 

The Monster Children of Prose Poetry

Charles Simic says that prose poetry is “the monster child of two incompatible strategies, the lyric and the narrative.” I think it’s the tension between those impulses that energizes prose poems, which are basically poems without the line breaks, written as short blocks of text. This form can allow writers to follow a thread of thought more directly, without particular regard for simile, metaphor or other poetic conventions. I liken them to small windows that frame a part of a day, or daydream. The instructor (me) will bring prompts to stimulate writing. We’ll write prose poems together, share fragments of text to discuss, and write some more.  

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The first poem, Scenes From a Marriage, by Cornelia Hoogland, is presented in both lyric and prose form, for discussion purposes in the workshop. The poems that follow are taken from David Lehman's Great American Prose Poems, and the internet.

​Scenes From a Marriage as a lyric poem by C Hoogland 

A dog.
 
Out of the blue
a dog bound between us in bed –
licked our faces
open
while outside
frost rang circles
round the stems of rushes
on the river. Ice
necklaces.
 
A breathing panting
red-tongued dog –
a carnivore.
 
And then it snowed.
Dogs love snow.
They jump up on all fours
as if to stop the falling
or be part of it.
 
Fine drifty snow –
a duvet plumping
its feathers
over the shook pines.
 
Blowing snow, fierce –
a film shot from a plane high
above everything.
It took longer than opera.
The undersides of the storm
were roads
leading to towns
gnarled as the subterraneous roots
of silver-leaved trees
rattled by
winds greater
than the camera’s eye.
 
The dog strained at its leash
or was it
what we together
became
that pulled
us over the fields.

Scenes From a Marriage as a prose poem, by C Hoogland 
 
A dog. Out of the blue a dog bound between us in bed–licked our faces open while outside frost rang circles round the stems of rushes on the river. Ice necklaces. A breathing panting red-tongued dog–a carnivore. And then it snowed. Dogs love snow. They jump up on all fours as if to stop the falling or be part of it. Fine drifty snow–a duvet plumping its feathers over the shook pines. Blowing snow, fierce–a film shot from a plane high above everything. It took longer than opera. The undersides of the storm were roads leading to towns gnarled as the subterraneous roots of silver-leaved trees rattled by winds greater than the camera’s eye. The dog strained at its leash or was it what we together became that pulled us over the fields.
 
A Dog by Gertrude Stein
A little monkey goes like a donkey that means to say that means to say that more sighs last goes. Leave with it. A little monkey goes like a donkey.
 
On Having My Pocket Picked In Rome by James Wright
These hands are desperate for me to stay alive. They do not want to lose me in the crowd. They know the slightest nudge on the wrong bone will cause me to look around and cry aloud. Therefore the hands grow cool and touch me lightly, lightly and accurately as a gypsy moth laying her larvae down in that foregone place where the tree is naked. It is only when the hands are gone I will step out of this crowd and walk down the street dimly aware of the dark infant strangers I carry in my body. They spin their nests and live on in me in their sleep.
 
Poem From The World Doesn’t End By Charles Simic
We were so poor I had to take the place of the bait in the mousetrap. All alone in the cellar I could hear them pacing upstairs, tossing and turning in their beds. “These are dark and evil days,” the mouse told me as he nibbled my ear. Years passed. My mother wore a cat fur collar which she stroked until its sparks lit up the cellar.
 
What We Miss by Sarah Manguso
Who says it’s so easy to save a life? In the middle of an interview for the job you might get you see the cat from the window of the seventeenth floor just as he’s crossing the street against traffic, just as you’re answering a question about your worst character flaw and lying that you are too careful. What if you keep seeing the cat at every moment you are unable to save him? Failure is more like this than like duels and marathons. Everything can be saved, and bad timing prevents it. Every minute, you are answering the question and looking out the window of the church to see your one great love blinded by the glare, crossing the street, alone.
 
The Canoeing by Russell Edson
     We went upstairs in a canoe. I kept catching my paddle in the banisters.
     We met several salmon passing us, flipping step by step; no doubt to find the remembered bedroom. And they were like the slippered feet of someone falling down the stairs, played backward as in a movie.
     And then we were passing over the downstairs closet under the stairs, and could feel the weight of dark overcoats and galoshes in a cave of umbrellas and fedoras; water dripping there, deep in the earth, like an endless meditation . . .
     . . . Finally the quiet waters of the upstairs hall. We dip our paddles with gentle care not to injure the quiet dark, and seem to glide for days by family bedrooms under a stillness of trees.
                                    

Charles Baudelaire in 1862 is said to have invented the prose poem described as an:

• hybrid form an anomaly paradox oxymoron
• amalgamation of lyric poetry–in poetry the reader turns at the end of the line, in prose, she proceeds.
• anecdote
• fairy tale
• allegory
• joke
• journal entry

Suzanne Bernard in 1959 said that there are 4 requirements of the prose poem:

1. embody the poet’s intention
2. have organic unity
3. be its own best excuse for being
4. be brief

Michael Benedict said there are five qualities that define the prose poem:

1. an attentiveness to the unconscious
2. a visionary thrust
3. a matter-of-fact poise
4. a certain tough-mindedness
5. a sense of humour
6. a kind of doubtfulness or hopeful skepticism

Models for prose poems

• Memo
• List
• Parable
• A speech
• A dialogue
• Tweets
• Email
• Siri

from David Lehman’s Great American Prose Poetry, 2003 

WRITING task is to write twenty lines or sentences, using, if you wish, some of these PROMPTS. Suggestions only! The "mystery" referred to below is one each participant found in a children's picture book he or she brought to the workshop. The task was to find a picture book with a mystery that spoke to the participant. Picture books, as aesthetic objects, are full of tiny intrigues--take a look for yourself. 
 

• A smell associated with the mystery.
• Your first thought when you noticed the mystery.
• A neighbouring image or association with the mystery.
• A line your partner said about your mystery.
• A line your partner said about her/his mystery.
• A line about a piece of clothing in this workshop (or any) room.
• One thing you ate for breakfast.
• Something out the window whether you can see it or not.
• A line with an animal in it.
• A hope you have.
• The thing that turns you to stone.
• The thing that turns you to jelly.
• A line with a colour in it, a smell
• An observance of weather.
• Yourself as a child.
• Your throat or other aspect of your body.
• When you are sad, you-
• What to forgive-
• What forgives you-
• What breaks your heart-
• Whose heart do you break?
• The sound of breaking
• The song that is yours to write-
• Mother’s admonition-
• The smell of your mother’s house-
•  What you carry in your wallet (don’t limit the size)
• something you have done to be polite
• respond to the phrase the sun isn’t rising-

QUALITIES OF POEMS (remember that qualities are often recognizable only after the poem is written. Use this list to help you edit your poem, to consider other directions, points of view, or shifts in form and/or content). 
 

• humour
• incongruity
• feeling of escape/adventure
• foreignness or dream quality
• qualities of sound (ie rhythm, movement either speeds up or slows down)
• flat delivery (danger of the writing being slack)
• matter-of-fact poise
• narrative compression
• twist in plot
• attentiveness to the unconscious
• visionary thrust
• tough-mindedness
• doubtfulness or hopeful skepticism