11-24-2012, 03:59 AM
Prose, by definition, is not poetry, in the same way that a circle is not a square.
The mere fact that some bright spark thought it would be v cutting edge, about 100 years ago, to speak of what he wrote as a prose-poem, does not mean that others need follow that. In the mind of Mr or Mrs Average, a poem involves some combination of meter and rhyme. I am not so elitist as to look down on that.
The absurdity of twisting terminology produces all sorts of problems. Poetry, now encompassing anything and everything, has to be qualified when people really mean poetry: and so we have 'traditional poetry'. What if I compose a traditional prose-poem?
As to Todd's snippet from Poe, it is a good example of vivid prose, which happily does not slip into the flowery or 'poetic'.
The mere fact that some bright spark thought it would be v cutting edge, about 100 years ago, to speak of what he wrote as a prose-poem, does not mean that others need follow that. In the mind of Mr or Mrs Average, a poem involves some combination of meter and rhyme. I am not so elitist as to look down on that.
The absurdity of twisting terminology produces all sorts of problems. Poetry, now encompassing anything and everything, has to be qualified when people really mean poetry: and so we have 'traditional poetry'. What if I compose a traditional prose-poem?
As to Todd's snippet from Poe, it is a good example of vivid prose, which happily does not slip into the flowery or 'poetic'.